


Who Wants To Live Forever

by sian1359



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 63,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28023849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359
Summary: Natasha Romanov has been around for a long, long time, She has her companions - her found family - who are trying to make their extra years count for something. Sometimes that's just helping a newborn immortal come to terms with her new life, and sometimes it's righting a few wrongs.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 22
Kudos: 41
Collections: Marvel Big Bang 2020





	Who Wants To Live Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [nemashka (art for 'who wants to live forever')](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025148) by [reywrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reywrite/pseuds/reywrite). 



> This is a fusion of the Avengers (MCU, television & comic characters) set in the world of The Old Guard. Certain aspects of how immortality works in the 'verse aren't readily explained in either the movie or in write-ups of the comics, so I have taken liberties in the world building. I also spent way too much time researching ancient and pre-history, to try and work out past names, where the characters were born, and how they've been remembered throughout history. Some of that made it into the story.
> 
> In various places, I have used dialog from the Marvel movies. The title is, of course, from a song of the same name, written by Brian May for the Highlander movie.
> 
> A thousand thank yous go out to Weeping Naiad for saving my ass with her beta work on my behalf. Any further mistakes are my own, as I tinker.

**

The vision, when it hits, comes hard and at a most inopportune time. Natasha has only enough time to bite out a "fuck" before she's wrestling with the steering wheel in a futile attempt to overturn momentum and gravity. Crashing is inevitable and while it might not be the messiest death she's experienced, it'll be bad enough. It's also going to hurt and create all manner of problems.

If Natasha has a fleeting thought of concern that this death might be _it_ for one of them, it's only natural. Born a thousand years apart, during what modern times call the pre-history of civilization, she's survived Coulfi for nearly three thousand years, now, and even Clint has lived a thousand years longer than the one they believe was the _first_ immortal had managed. So every time she's facing death at this point, she's also wondering if it will be the last time. 

It's not that death – even her final one – scares her. There is little that does any more. But she still feels a sorrow, if for nothing more than those she will leave behind. There are even days when she almost wishes for her life to end, though she's never lost herself as Alexei did, and actively sought it. She still sees wonder in the world; a part of her even hoping to live long enough to be able to voyage into the stars.

At least if true death does come on this day, she can take solace in knowing that there is a newly born immortal out there to be found and welcomed.

She smiles as she feels Clint grab hold of her hand. It's not like having it on the steering wheel is going to make a lick of difference, and the connection is more important regardless. The last thing she hears is his "Thelma and Louise, bitches!"

*****

Bruce thinks that the length of time it takes to return to life is tied to how long their dying takes after receiving a mortal wound, but it's not a theory they've actually confirmed despite an abundance of data points. Certainly _timing_ how long it takes a friend/brother to die and come back is the last thing Natasha is thinking about while it's happening, especially in the heat of battle.

Even though Bruce's scientific curiosity rivals Da Vinci, Newton, or Einstein's, there are also some answers not worth the cost to find them.

Having died hundreds of times more than any of the others, there are certain things that Natasha knows and accepts as true, along with certain things that she does to hasten coming back to herself, but none of them matter if she is also waiting for one of her brothers to come back next to her. So as soon as she heals enough to free herself from her side of the mangled car, she's gasping and stumbling to the other side to pull Clint free before allowing herself to fall and lie next to him. She casts her hand against his chest, ignoring the sight and pain of the bone that's pierced the flesh of her forearm, so that she might feel his body quicken and take its first breath again.

Flashes of the reborn's death still flicker behind Natasha's eyes as she waits and heals. The imagery is removed now, no longer something she feels as if she's experiencing herself, and she has to fight to keep the impressions clear given how the pain from her own body tries to distract her. This connection that they all share is their only source of information to draw upon in hopes of finding the new immortal. 

Technology has, at least, given them something more than having to walk the breadth and length of the world with only a fleeting hope that the reborn hasn't fled too far from the area before they luck upon the area where the death and rebirth took place. (Thor calls their search for new immortals _trying to write a message on the lake_ , which is a clear if poetic description of how futile the searches could become, lasting months or even years.) She hasn't always been successful, and the echoes from broken connections can still haunt her, although at this point those who stayed lost have found their final deaths, so that it's simply guilt giving her nightmares, not a psychic wound that only heals when they meet face to face.

Before her thoughts spiral down too far to those never found (or found too late), Natasha feels Clint take a breath beneath fingers twisting to restore themselves. She smiles and turns her head, needing to spit out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth before she can speak.

"There you are, my _Cudyll_ ," she says, using the tongue of his birth and the name his parents had granted him. She's not the only one who's thoughts dwell on their past when coming back to life. "Are you with me?"

"Fuck," comes his first reply, or rather, its ancient equivalent, along with several other choice curses that have no modern counterparts as they involve body parts of extinct animals and long dead gods. He then chokes, and she worries for a moment that he's going to asphyxiate and she'll have to wait for him to revive again, but instead he's rolling to his knees and coughing, before finally saying in English, "Hey, we didn't burn up."

"Disappointed?" Natasha asks, also returning to English. As the widest learned second language of the modern world, it gets them by in most places and draws much less attention than when people of their apparent race speak Mandarin.

Of course Clint's answer is no; while there are many painful ways to die, fire is one of the worst, and something neither of them would care to experience. Again.

"Impressed," he says instead. "Let's hear it for the Swedes and their hybrid Polestar. I guess I should stop dissing Volvo."

Clint, like every other man she knows, prefers muscle cars and monster trucks. Gas mileage and speed limits be damned. Natasha likes sports cars too, but she dislikes the attention they bring with them. There is also something to be said about being able to drive through fencing, other cars, or any other ad hoc roadblock set up to stop them and still keep moving.

"You put bleach in the trunk before we left, right?" Natasha asks as she pulls herself to her feet and confirms what she suspects. The car has sustained too much damage to drive, even if they could get it back to a road. So they're going to have to abandon it and walk back twenty or so miles to the nearest town. All without looking like accident victims. First, though, they'll need to taint the blood and any other evidence on scene that could be used to identify who'd been involved in such a horrific crash.

"Otherwise, we're going to have to make it burn, and risk starting a fire that could get out of control."

While Tony has done a tremendous job of eliminating or at least altering any DNA, blood samples, and any fingerprints of theirs in the world's databases, Natasha prefers to rely on her own skills of staying off the radar, even if she is coming to appreciate – and trust – Howard's son. 

"Yes on the bleach," Clint answers, also gaining his feet. He twists his back in a joint popping series of cracks that has Natasha wincing in sympathy.

She is constantly amazed and grateful that their bones heal in their proper alignments even if it sometimes still takes a few stretches or steps to find comfort back in their skin. As best as she can tell, _her_ death had come from a crushed ribcage thanks to the engine block pushing through the dashboard and steering wheel. Clint no doubt had had his own crush injuries, but the broken neck should have been his cause of death. Or the branch she'd had to pull out of his lung. That had certainly left the largest source of his blood residue, while cracking her forehead against the side window as well as breaking her nose had caused hers.

Together they move to the trunk, which Clint forces open despite the bent frame. He pulls out one of the two jerrycans of water, while Natasha strips down so she can begin washing away the worst of the blood from her body. He does the same and then they deal with each other's spots that got missed, before they change into blood-free clothing from their suitcases. She then begins filling several bota bags with more of the water before spilling the rest over the ground, while Clint grabs up their castoffs clothes and throws them back into his bag after he's gathered up whatever food they had left and puts it into her bag. Next Natasha deals with their guns, checking over her Glock before holstering it on her hip, then doing the same to the Sig Sauer that Clint will tuck under his jacket against the small of his back after he gets done with the bleach.

As the car hadn't been rented in a name that could be traced back to her (to any of them), and by now any images that might have been taken of her or her ID would have been altered, she feels no regret in knowing that Justin Hammer will have a lot of explaining to do when Interpol shows up at his hotel room in Sophia. She likes that they no longer always need to use physical weapons to thwart the villains in the world.

Their presence now erased from the car and surrounding countryside, they each take up one of the bags by straps that turn them into backpacks. While they'd been intending to cross over into Serbia, Novo Korito, the nearest village that direction, is even smaller than Salash on this side, with nothing close to a hotel or even cell service. Salash isn't too much bigger, but their phones had worked when they'd driven through, Clint able to spend the morning singing along to one of his playlists until the service had dropped just past the last town. Backtracking also means staying on a downhill path. After having walked the length of Europe, much of the Middle East, and a fair portion of Asia over her extended lifetime, she sees no reason to expend any unnecessary effort when it is not called for.

"What did you get from the girl's death?" Natasha asks as they start walking.

Outside of the actual resurrection, the weird psychic connection that only lasts until they find the new immortal is the bit that Natasha still finds the hardest to deal with. Even before Bruce explained the science behind regrowing limbs and fast regeneration, she'd seen evidence of extraordinary healing in her time and so can accept that she is just an extreme example of something that already exists in nature. Nowhere outside of fantasy and science fiction tales, however, have any of them ever been able to find an analog – or credible explanation – for experiencing the pre-immortal's first death (and any subsequent ones that then mysteriously end once they see one another). Bruce calls it a biological imperative, but doesn't have any idea of how or why it evolved, since immortality seems to be a very rare, very random trait and is not inheritable.

"Gunshot. Deadly but not immediate. She's young. Early twenties, I'd guess." Clint takes the lead as they head down the mountain; he has a knack for finding the easiest paths. "Bright, passionate, not a revolutionary, but willing to stand up and do what is right."

"Even when it gets her killed," Natasha has to remark. It's a promising trait if it proves accurate, and one that she agrees feels true.

Unfortunately, not all of the immortals they've discovered have felt that their extra years gave them a responsibility to aid humanity. Rather, a few decided it proved a divine right to rule over the civilization they had come from. Loki, they've been able to convince otherwise, but Natasha doesn't think she'll ever release the tremendous guilt she still holds for taking so long to put an end to Lü Zhi Gao and her cult of The Hand, or for allowing Ultrondius to seize and hold power, given how Ultron's excesses had put Caligula and Commodus to shame. 

Or get over the utter waste of having to bring about the final death to their own.

"I doubt she went out looking to be a martyr, but the only sense of regret I got from her last moments was from leaving things unfinished," Clint offers as he removes two pairs of sunglasses from the interior pocket of his jacket and offers her one.

They'll freckle and burn during the walk, but as long as they spend a few minutes in the shade before they actually walk into town, the burns will fade.

"Leaving someone behind, I think," Natasha clarifies from her own impressions of the girl as she takes one of the pairs of glasses with a nod of thanks. 

While she'll encourage this one to make a clean break from her friends and family, convincing the new ones that staying in touch will either end in the heartache that comes from watching those who you care for grow old and die, or from being resented and damned for not being able to share their immortality, seems to be a lesson that needs to be learned, not taught.

Clint shrugs. "' _Better to have loved and lost'_ , and all that. It's what keeps us human and involved."

She frowns in turn, not so much from the sentiment, as from the _sentiment_. "If I'm quoting Tennyson," she says archly, "I prefer his ' _nature, red in tooth and claw'_."

"Ah, but that's because you are a warrior and pragmatist, not a romantic," he responds with a grin and a salute that went out of style before Aristotle was born.

She's been called worse (though never by him), and it's not as if he isn't right. There are times that Natasha wishes she could hold onto a fraction of Clint's passion and optimism, but those kinds of emotions had been burned out of her long before Coulfi, son of Coul, had found her on the steppe of what is now called Ukraine. She'd been Nem then, for hundreds of years, alone and understanding nothing but that she was a monster, trying to survive in a world where clan meant everything and to be without meant being feared, shunned, and attacked. Coulfi's had been the first hand offered to her without violence that she could remember, and while she'd tried to repay him for his kindness, she'd been a feral thing, distrustful and so very angry.

Every time Clint is laid low in his grief for missing Bucky or Bruce rages at the injustices he sees around him, she counts herself fortunate that such pain is more of an intellectual exercise, a reaction that she can emulate, but doesn't really feel herself. It's not as if she doesn't feel her own sorrow from Bucky's loss, just as she does over Coulfi's – or even that of the others who no longer walk with them. She just doesn't let her emotions cripple or compromise her, and so her reputation of being unfeeling has existed for nearly as long as she has.

While others may think her heart pitiless, she does still have one, and Clint is the one who most nurtures it. So she responds with a different one-handed gesture made popular before Aristotle, yet one still in vogue today, which simply causes laughter to spill from his throat that she quickly lets loose herself.

"Hey, at least we won't have to travel too far to find her," Clint offers when they finally stop laughing and resume their walk.

"What did you see?" Natasha asks. 

Of them all, Clint is the best at focusing on what the new immortal is seeing at the point of their first death (that had been Bucky and Gao's skill, too), while she and Loki get echoes of the dying's final thoughts, and Bruce seems to know what the reborn is doing as they die. Thor's focus seems to change with each new immortal, as had Coulfi's, and as has Sam's so far. There have only been two new activations since Sam's in the fourteenth century, so they don't know whether he will eventually _specialize_ or stay random. Natasha is definitely curious as to what Steve, who's an artist at heart despite spending so much of his young life as a soldier, twigged on, this being his first new immortal.

"Signs in Cyrillic as well as one or more of the Slavic variants scattered amongst a crowd that surrounded her. A few were speaking out against Von Doom, so it's likely one of the neighboring countries, since he doesn't allow public dissent in his own." He turns to look her direction, though with the sunglasses it's hard to tell what this has led him to think. "It would be quite the coincidence if we end up in Budapest despite turning down the offer to run security for the opposition candidate in the upcoming elections. Has it gotten to the point of violent street protests there?" he asks since she's the one who prefers to do the political research behind their jobs, while Clint investigates the people.

"Only if someone has come in specifically to stir up that kind of trouble in the last week," she responds. "I turned down the job because it looked as if we'd just be tools for Melkin's posturing, not because we'd be needed." Now frowning, Natasha goes back through her decisions, wondering if she'd missed something that would have foretold this kind of protesting. "No," she muses aloud, "if there are students and other locals protesting in the streets against Von Doom, it's probably due to some new trade deal or treaty that's being proposed, which isn't prudent for Hungary to consider until after the local elections."

"Well, given as to how it devolved into violence, I don't imagine it will be hard to pin down the location once we get cell service again," Clint offers as he uses his body to hold back a tenacious bush so she can pass through without incident. "So where are you thinking for our grand meet up with the others? If you're taking suggestions, mine's for Tony's villa in Cote d'Azur."

Natasha raises her brow in surprise. "Don't you think the French Riviera might be a little much to deal with on top of becoming immortal and learning she's not the only one?"

Clint ducks his head as his cheeks heat up, because he knows this. "Yeah," he agrees as he lifts his glasses so she can clearly read his expression: hopeful as well as playful and more than a little mischievous. "It's just that Steve's hilariously awkward when he's confronted by reminders that Tony's one of the richest men on Earth and not just our pet hacker."

"True," Natasha concedes with another bright laugh while they move forward. For a moment she's ready to give in, not just for the gentle humiliation Steve would endure, but because taking a working holiday in the bright sun and brighter lights of Monaco at night would be welcome after six weeks of nonstop work in some of Europe's worst trouble spots. Their planned drive through the mountains into Serbia had been a concession and an attempt to take a few days to relax and take their time before she and Clint end up in Croatia for their next job due to start in a week.

If not Tony's place, they have a farm outside of Berlin that would be a less intimidating place to take their newest sister. But its seclusion, should the girl decide to run from them, would offer plenty of places to hide within the wooded countryside. Plus she would find sympathetic people to shelter her if she claimed she was being chased. The safe houses in Vienna, Berlin, and Kiev are each in the heart of the city so no greater advantage over Monaco other than their proximity to Von Doom and Latveria. The bolt holes in Belfast, Glasgow, Scandinavia or the Iberian Peninsula are also rural, and could take away any common culture or language the girl might take advantage of if she ran, but they'd have to get her there first, without raising a fuss if she proved less than willing to go with them.

First meetings rarely went smoothly. Regardless of how patient and forthcoming they try to be – no matter which of them makes that first contact – they are generally met with fear and suspicion from a new immortal, along with a tremendous amount of rejection and denial. Loki had actually fled from them _four_ –

Fuck.

Loki.

Natasha stops abruptly, any joy she'd allowed herself in thinking of Steve and Tony's awkward dance, or of the pleasure of a few days rest in luxury, tumbling away. Clint, always sensitive to her mood, stops too. He turns carefully toward her, assessing the countryside for what might have caught her attention before turning to study her when he sees nothing that should have brought her up short. For a moment she doesn't want to remove her glasses, to let him see the expression of bitter anger and guilt that she can't hold back. Though she probably didn't need to; there is no one else who can read her this well. No one else she _allows_ to see her close enough that even a micro-expression on her face tells him what he needs to know, not that she'd conceal what she's realized. Not from him.

He takes in a breath that he then lets out slowly, while he consciously forces his shoulders to relax.

"I'm sorry, Clint," she starts, but he quickly waves away any apology.

He's no better at keeping his thoughts from her, though he's also never bothered to be as guarded as she is. What she reads now, even as he keeps his sunglasses on is a growing dismay and fury as well as resentment, an expression that then quickly turns into resignation, along with an acceptance of the absurdity that is their lives.

"One hundred years was just an arbitrary number anyway," he acknowledges with a tight, unhappy smile. "It's been seventy-five, which has either made our point to him, or nothing is going to. At least not as long as Thor won't let him be exiled alone."

Letting Thor go with Loki had been the only area of disagreement when they'd voted those seventy-five years ago. Clint and Bruce had agreed that Natasha's concerns over what Loki might get up to if left entirely on his own were valid, while Steve and Sam, the youngest of them and who'd never known Alexei or had yet faced the fear of living out an eternity completely alone, had felt a solitary exile was fitting and just. 

"Not even Bruce has ever suggested we might have two activations so close together," Natasha reminds him, not that she needs to tell him anything about that time, of course. At best she's offering justification to something he agreed with; simply trying to assuage this new guilt she must add to all the rest. "A hundred years should have passed without having to worry about something like this – "

"Tasha, it's fine," Clint interrupts her, though he doesn't look fine.

Not that he should, of course. Bucky had been his lover – his soulmate if such a thing existed – for thousands of years. Seventy-five years of mourning is nothing to a love that spanned eons.

"Loki is Loki," Clint continues, still with that tight smile that she hates. "He's always looked after himself first. It's as Coulfi always said, you can't blame a scorpion for its nature. Even at the time, I accepted that Loki thought he was saving me by sacrificing Bucky. I went after him for not doing it the other way around, not because he wouldn't sacrifice himself."

Went after him is something of an understatement, not that Natasha had begrudged Clint his retaliation then or even now when she can consider things more objectively. They'd all wanted to punish Loki back then. To do worse than just banish him for 100 years for what they saw as a betrayal, when it had truly just been an act of selfishness. At least Clint's anguish and anger had been righteous, his bloody reprisal done in the heat of the moment. Yet he'd also been the first to point out that making Loki's death permanent wouldn't have served the same kind of purpose that executing Ultron or Gao had. That Loki hadn't allowed Bucky to die out of direct cruelty or to further any plan other than to preserve his own life. So if they gave Loki _his_ final death, they'd only be doing it for themselves, not out of some kind of justice for Bucky.

Clint offers up a shrug, his expression turning wry and making Natasha ache. Few of their lives had been easy, certainly not their first ones. Part of what motivates Natasha to keep going is trying to offer her brothers and past sisters something better, something that makes their history a little easier to leave behind.

"Really, Tash, worry about how the others are going to react to Loki, not me," he tells her although he looks away. "I'll ignore him. No violence unless he offers it first. And let's be real," he adds with a chuff of hollow laughter. "You only suggested exiling Loki in the first place because, if you hadn't, I would have walked away for likely the same hundred years. Loki being himself just made choosing which of us left and who stayed, easy to decide."

"Easy or hard, I will always choose you first," she swears although it's an oath he will never ask of her.

Although she loves all of her found family, although she is willing to live and fight and die with and for each of them, Clint will always hold first place in her heart, tucked there next to her memories of Coulfi. Even Bucky, who'd been next coming along a millennia or so later, had never quite meant as much, perhaps because Clint and Coulfi had been the ones who'd helped her regain her humanity, while Bucky had come to them after she had found her peace. 

"Thor will step up and lead the others when we decide to walk away," she tells him, extending an offer she'd thought would still be centuries down the road when this day started. "And if he doesn't choose to, they will follow Sam – or Steve, once he gains a little more perspective and experience."

"Is that what you want, _Nemashka?_ " Clint asks, turning back to her, his glasses now raised to the top of his head as hers are, so that there are no secrets or misunderstandings between them. "Not just to take a break for a decade or a century, but to disappear and turn things over to one of the others?"

"It's been so long," she tells him, feeling all the weariness of her age that she normally ignores. "Christianity isn't even half as old as we are. We once helped shape civilizations, but now …" She can only shake her head, overwhelmed by the futility of it all. "Nothing that we do changes anything anymore. There is always another war, another villain or despot or would be savior who puts power over people. We might save a life or even a country, but what is the point, when there is always someone else so eager to do evil?"

"I think that _is_ the point," he answers her softly, taking her hands into his. "Because there is always someone out there eager to do evil. Because people like Ahriman, Herod, Temüjin, Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler, and all of their ilk must be stopped and sometimes we are the only ones who can – or at least we can try to advise and inspire the oppressed to rise up. Can you really see yourself standing by and doing nothing?" he asks with a kind of half smile on his face, because he well knows she can't even take a day of idleness without looking for the next windmill to tilt at.

"We may be swimming against the tide all too often," he adds solemnly, "but we are still moving forward. And who knows better than we, that a trickle of water eventually gives us the Grand Canyon."

Of course he then ruins the moment by being unable to keep a straight face. Natasha snorts and rolls, but she doesn't free her hands. Despite the intentional oversell, she knows he means what he's said, and she takes the comfort he is offering. Drawing him close by their still clasped hands, she pulls him down so she can kiss his forehead in a benediction of thanks and gratitude. She doubts that she will ever again feel the initial eagerness and promise of the calling that Coulfi had set them upon, but as long as she can walk and work with Clint, she can find the strength and impetus to keep going.

If nothing else, Natasha still feels a duty and obligation to their newest immortal. Especially since it is another woman, after being too many years alone with only the boys after Yelena and Gao. 

If Clint can forgive and allow Loki back into the fold, she can do no less.

*****

Although Natasha's biggest fear is other people discovering and then exploiting their secret, she can admit that the tradeoffs for Tony Stark knowing about them are worth it. It's not his money, since the oldest of them have treasures beyond even Tony's billions squirreled away to be "uncovered" should they ever need excessive wealth, and even the younger immortals have learned the value of hiding the occasional Warhol, Monet, or even a treatise by Galileo for a rainy day. Thanks to Tony's genius (so like his father before him), they now have a shield and ally to deal with the technologies that keep shrinking the world. Too, they have an abundance of ready resources that can't be traced back to their own hands, so maybe it is a _little_ about Stark's wealth, too. Or at least his generosity in offering it.

Nominally, they are consultants, on Stark Industries' payroll and able to access personnel, equipment, and funds when needed. Each of them pays a fair share of taxes (even if it's never under their current names), and they have filed all manner of paperwork so that they have a multitude of names, IDs, histories, and paper trails they can call upon as needed. Natasha is just waiting until they get back within range of a cell tower to take advantage of this status with Stark to charter transportation out of Bulgaria.

Which she expects to come soon; it's been several hours of walking and easy conversation, so they should be only a couple of miles out of Salash. In addition to transportation, Natasha would like an opportunity to piss without having to squat over the dirt, a decent meal that is more than protein bars, dried fruit, and jerky, and if she's really lucky, to shower, though that will likely have to wait since she's not looking to make an overnight stay here. The sooner they can find their new sister, the better.

Sure enough, within only a few more minutes, both of their phones ping. Natasha looks over to Clint, curious as to why he only got one text when she has several missed calls and apparently one voicemail. Even with the others knowing they were traveling together, when they couldn't reach her, they should have tried to contact Clint to make sure everything was okay.

He looks bemused as well. "Not from a number I recognize, but the sender is obvious," he tells her, his expression turning wry as he rolls his eyes. "'Mynydd,'" he reads, his voice unconsciously taking on the liquid tones of his homeland to match that earlier version of his name. "'I know there is nothing I can say or do to redress my wrongs against you. Regardless, please do not allow this child to become another victim of my flaws. Although I do not deserve it, you have been venerated throughout the ages for your mercy, and I am asking that you grant it now, for her sake if not for mine.'" Clint then snorts. "How is it that even when he's apologizing, Loki finds a way to make it all about him?"

"When isn't it about him?" she asks rhetorically, even as she is pleased to see that Loki took the initiative to reach out and even apologize, as poorly done as it might have been.

"Arrogance, thy name is immortal," Clint misquotes _Hamlet_ with a twist of his lips that is almost a smile. "That is something we are all guilty of. Well, except for Steve. And maybe Sam."

"I suppose it is hard to shake the habit when we've been _venerated_ as gods and angels," she allows, not that being worshipped is all wine, roses, and other offerings by the devoted.

At least people aren’t so naïve any longer; they don’t mark what they can’t explain as miracles or handiwork of the gods that they then must bow to – or cast out. Gullible enough to follow a cult leader, sure. Gao had been more than happy to fill that role. Now, though, were word of their _quirks_ to become public knowledge, they'd be branded as aliens. Better that than as demons, Natasha supposes.

"So where do I tell Mephistopheles to meet us?" Clint asks again, waving his phone.

Natasha laughs, as Clint is no doubt thinking much the same as she is. Gods, angels – _and_ demons – the oldest of them hold many places in the histories of humanity. She hadn't been surprised when, back during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Thor and Loki chose to take up two of their ancient names again. More fun to relive when they were remembered fondly, over the time when Loki had been cast as the Devil, due to that unfortunate business with Faust. 

Reminding Loki of _that_ business, after seventy-five years of silence, is clever, passive-aggressive notice that while Clint might forgive him, he is never going to forget what got taken from them – nor let Loki forget.

"Give me a minute," Natasha says as she glances back at her own phone, putting it on speaker as she plays the first voicemail.

" _Sam and I were already heading to Manhattan to debrief on our concluded business in DC_ ," Steve's voice rings out. " _We've gathered Bruce and are taking a jet to Vienna. Based on news reports and the details we've put together, pretty sure the death went down in Sokovia. Novi Grad, specifically. Students are protesting an upcoming summit with Von Doom that ended in violence this morning. Several people died, protesters and police alike. Investigating it is going to be ugly, so I was thinking a couple of us could be there as representatives making sure Stark Industries interests remain safe, while maybe you and Clint could pose as foreign journalists?_ " he proposes.

"This was left two hours ago," Natasha notes, looking at the time stamp, while the texts had come much earlier; soon after their recovering from the car accident. Hopefully Steve and Sam hadn't ended up in one of their own.

"So they've still got at least four hours before arriving in Vienna, and then they'll still have to get from Vienna to Novi Grad," Clint does the math. "We can be in Novi Grad in three, assuming we can get a helicopter out of Sofia to pick us up in Salash." he suggests. 

Natasha nods. "Meeting everyone in Vienna, I guess."

Clint's brow goes up. "You really want to introduce the poor girl to all of us in an abandoned bomb shelter?" he asks, looking not so shocked, but definitely judgmental.

She spreads her arms. "The others are already going to be there. It's certainly closer to Sokovia than any of the other locations, and it has the benefit of being a city that Loki despises, remember? He'll want to object – oh, right," Natasha interrupts herself as she's the one that now remembers. "You weren't there. That's when you, Bucky, and Thor were off playing soldiers in the Colonies while Empress Maria Theresa took exception with Loki and banished him from Vienna."

Clint's expression turns gleeful, and promises that this is something he'll give Loki shit over. "How have I never heard this before? Is that why Loki later chose to side with that dick, Napoleon, against the Third Coalition?"

She nods. "Definitely part of the reason; Loki was very fond of Mozart and took her slighting of the boy badly. I also think Loki just wanted some space from Thor, as well as the opportunity for some mischief and slaughter."

The Napoleonic Wars certainly hadn't been the first time some of them had been on different sides of a conflict; that was actually a common tactic they employed to try and mitigate the worst of the violence and carnage of great conflicts. That war had seen actual sides chosen, however, as even though he, Bucky, and Thor had fought _against_ the British only thirty years previous, Clint and Bucky, along with Bruce championed the United Kingdom claim against Napoleon. Loki, on the other hand, had liked Napoleon, and Thor and Gao had supported him, while Natasha had declined to choose a side (as had Sam, with the two of them deciding to stay in America and maintain their influence over the fledgling new democracy).

"Loki has always taken slights against his friends quite personally," Clint acknowledges with a nod, his tone mocking. "He's what, less than half my age, but holds twice as many grievances? I don't know how – or why he bothers – remembering all of those grudges."

"Like you said, he takes everything personally. Which is why I think Vienna is the perfect location to bring our newest member into the family."

Natasha is just fine with Loki thinking _she_ picked Vienna specifically to vex him. That she is allowing him back solely for the sake of the girl. Clint isn't the only master of passive-aggressive tactics, and she sees no reason to make things easy for Loki. Hopefully it will cause him to work harder to stay in their good graces though, of course, it could spectacularly backfire with him being more of a brat than normal.

Either way, it will be nice to see Thor again.

"You better warn Steve about Loki showing up," Clint suggests after typing in the answer to the location question and then putting his phone back on his belt. "Bucky was a Howling Commando in Steve's mind, for all that Bucky was Resistance instead of military. I'd like to think Sam will remind him that the visions don't stop until a physical meeting, but with this being his first new immortal since his own rebirth, Steve might not understand how critical it is for Loki to come back."

"Yes, you mentioned that earlier, didn't you? I didn't realize he and Bucky had gotten that close," Natasha admits, glad for the heads up, since an angry Steve is a very self-righteous Steve.

She'd been much too concerned about losing Clint back then to have paid attention to any distress that Steve might have felt from losing Bucky too. Having to deal with her own feelings about Bucky's death, with what that did to Clint, and then with Loki's role in it and Thor's decision to leave with Loki, Natasha hadn't had any energy left to also deal with Sam or Bruce, and especially not with Steve, someone she'd barely known. In her darkest moments, she'd actually blamed Steve in thinking that one of them had had to die their final death in order for Steve to have his first. Of course, there has never been any evidence to support such a theory; the number of immortals only increasing as the years go on. It’s certainly not like there is a finite amount of energy needed to be shared amongst them, so no _There Can Be Only One_ endgame, as a fanciful Hollywood movie once proposed.

Natasha hopes she's done better by Steve in the last _seventy_ years, having found in him someone who, like Coulfi, didn't need to be convinced to take up the fight and do the right thing, but who has always lived his life like that. She truly admires and likes Steve, and has no doubt that he will eventually end up guiding the group's focus in a few more generations. Steve's moral compass is that strong.

Until then, however, she, as the oldest of them, is who the others look to, and right now they are waiting on her to divvy up the responsibilities for finding the world's newest immortal. She texts Steve back instead of calling. Tells him that she and Clint will go to Sokovia, and suggests the rest wait in Vienna. Even if Steve doesn't get the message until they've landed, it should keep them in place and keep them from missing Natasha, Clint, and the girl should they arrive in Vienna first.

Just seconds after the texts send, her phone rings. It's Sam telling her that they're using one of Tony's private jets so calling is allowed, and that they expect to arrive in Vienna at seven pm local.

"We might have a night of dark dreams ahead of us," she warns Sam. She doesn't expect that she and Clint will make Sokovia before five local themselves, which doesn't leave them much daylight to conduct their search. "I don't suppose we know her name yet?" she asks. "Do we at least have confirmation as to where in Novi Grad the protest turned violent? Or where the bodies were taken?"

" _Yes on the protest's location,"_ Sam replies. " _And_ _Steve managed a clear drawing of our woman's companion_. So _far, though, we've only been able to match it to some blurry photos taken during the panic, that we think show the two of them together. Steve's talking to Tony right now, telling him to text copies of the drawing and any likely photos on to you. If these two are students and not just folk who got caught up in the protests, there should be campus IDs that Tony can set his bots to match through facial recognition once we get a good shot of her. Maybe they're roommates or even family of some kind; all three of us got a sense that the guy is definitely someone important to her and not just the guy she was standing next to when the bullets started flying_."

"He is her dying regret: leaving him behind. And they were definitely part of the protest," Natasha offers up what she and Clint gleaned from the connection. "We'll cross our fingers that the local medical examiner waits to start any autopsies until morning. But light a fire under Tony," she adds. "The sooner we get to her, the cleaner the extraction is going to be. With everyone having cameras on their phones, the last thing we need is someone shooting video of a resurrecting immortal."

" _You don't think we can use the shooting a movie excuse twice_?" Sam questions in a brighter tone, referring to the blurry footage that had gotten out a few years ago during a mission gone wrong in Dubai.

Sam and Steve had both died during that mission, while she and Clint had been injured badly enough that no one should have been able to just get up and walk it off. But, of course, that's what the shaky video had shown, Natasha rising to her feet after being shot three times point blank. While there had been plenty of doubters of its validity making comments as the video went viral, it had had its believers as well. This, in turn, had forced them to devise a rational explanation for what had been witnessed, so that the absurd but true speculation went the way of conspiracists and other wackaloons. Tony quickly put a narrative together, manufacturing a set of enterprising kids taking advantage of a Hollywood production company who'd already bought the expensive permits and road closures to shoot footage in front of the Burj, with the kids sneaking in to film their own movie at the same time and in the same general area. Fortunately the original video hadn't shown any of them clearly enough to be identified, and Tony had had no difficulty in convincing some of his local employees to dress similarly so a longer, legit scene could be film and leaked before releasing the news that the fake movie lost its funding and would never get completed. All anonymously, of course, since while Stark Industries manufactures many different products, filmed entertainment isn't one of them.

"I think that eventually we're going to have to end up making a damn full-length movie," she admits with some frustration. "just so there _is_ video out there to cover postings Tony can't completely erase. But that's a future consideration for a less busy and less fraught day." She sighs and takes a look at her arms and sees that her sunburn has disappeared. 

"Clint and I've just reached Salash," she then tells Sam. "We'll clean up, get something to eat, and take off for Sokovia. Hopefully by the time we reach the city, Tony will have more than a starting point for us. Like I said in my text, there is no point in you guys leaving Vienna. If we're lucky we'll have her in hand and be on our way to you by the time you land. If it looks like we'll be stuck there overnight, I'll call or text you with updates," Natasha starts winding the conversation down. Before she says goodbye, however, she's got one more question – and she should confirm that Loki will be joining them. Having Sam be the one to break that news to Bruce and Steve sounds like a terrific idea.

(She's pretty sure Sam and Steve are going to get together as more than work partners soon enough, though Steve also seems to be fascinated by Tony. Natasha knows that Sam wouldn't be averse to a poly relationship, but she's not so sure that Tony's girlfriend is quite so open. Or that Tony is truly the libertine his reputation paints him as; now that he's fallen in love with Pepper.)

"Sam, how's Bruce handling everything?"

" _He's too busy being curious and concerned about what it might mean to have a new immortal born so soon after Steve activated, to be nervous about getting triggered by her into his own violence. It also looks like everyone has gotten panicked about the government crackdown for now, including the government, so there shouldn't be any spillover from things escalating. Even Von Doom has backed off for now. According to the most recent news accounts, he's postponed his meeting with President Zemo for at least a month. The protesters have cleared out of the streets, claiming victory as well as the moral high ground over the government overreacting with a fascist response. Still, it's probably a good idea that you two are going to pick our gal up instead of us. We can keep Bruce distracted."_

Natasha lets herself breathe a sigh of relief. They had found Bruce (then known as Dasáki ) outside of Constantinople, sent from Greece to fight for Thōmas ho Slavos' during his revolt against Emperor Michael II the Amorian. A philosopher as well as a soldier, Dasáki compensated for his more passive bent by using Henbane to turn berserker in battle. Unable to gainsay the results, and since an overdose proved harmless, Dasáki kept with his usage of the drug throughout their years as mercenaries until his body had become so conditioned to frenzy that he only needed to intend violence to go berserk, no drug needed.

Great during battle, but terrifying when Dasáki lost control of his rage and lost himself to mindless violence with no regard to who he hurt. Reaching this realization during the Crusades, Dasáki withdrew from them for a few hundred years, only coming back once he'd felt able to control his rage, yet also with the condition that he would no longer take any active role in fighting. Working with them through support and scientific discovery, he hoped to unlock the secrets of their immortality without resorting to the gross experimentation and tortures they'd experienced in their pasts. Changing his name to Bruce, he'd also began to greater influence the way the rest of them sought to guide humanity, suggesting nonviolent alternatives to some situations, while simultaneously and more directly changing society by contributing to the grand progress of science and technology.

Bruce's retirement from the field had worked for nearly three hundred years. Right up until Loki had left Bucky to be cremated in the fires of a Nazi concentration camp. Like Clint, Bruce had killed Loki for that – several times actually – and had been unable to be in the same room with him without flying into a killing rage that not even Sam could talk him down from, that Thor could not battle to stop him without killing Bruce in turn. It had taken Clint's stronger claim to vengeance, or more, his refusal to kill Loki again, that stopped Bruce, who then walked away to go help Sam deal with Steve.

" _Bruce will be fine, Natasha. Even with Loki's return_ ," Sam adds after a pause where he was speaking to someone else, most likely Bruce. _"We've got his back"_ he assures her, reminding her once more why he is their conscience and their counselor.

None of her boys are stupid, but Sam has taken the time to actually get formal degrees in several fields (and under several names), his most recent master’s earned in Trauma Psychology.

" _None of us are happy about it, but we know it has to happen. Bruce plans to keep their interactions to a minimum. And we'll have Steve there this time to help Thor keep him from killing Loki, if it comes to that."_

"Loki did ask Clint's permission to return, not mine," Natasha tells Sam, not sure whether she's speaking up for their trickster, or looking to condemn him.

" _Well, that's something, I guess_ ," Sam says, so she guesses she should see it as a sign of contrition and maturity, not a slight against her.

" _Whether Thor had anything to do with that or not, you did a good thing raising no objections to him going off with Loki. None of us are good on our own for too long_."

A few years – even a decade or two – yeah, sometimes one of them needs to step away. Including her and even from Clint. For now, though, she is glad she has him at her side. With the first buildings of Salash now before them, Clint is turning on his charm to find them some place where they can wait until their ride arrives.

"We're here, Sam. I'll call back once we've made Novi Grad, but feel free to reach out before that if you get something more to work on finding her. Pretty sure Clint's going to insist on piloting, since I'm the one who crashed our car when the visions hit, so call or text my phone, not his."

Sam laughs. " _Like he needs an excuse to take charge in the cockpit. Good hunting, Nat. Hopefully we'll see you tonight_."

" _Ndaenda_ , Amoyi," Natasha makes her goodbye, feeling that today is a good day to remember their original names and original languages.

" _Do svidaniya, Nem."_

Sam's a relative youngster, who knows many of the current languages spoken in the world, but he's had no reason to learn any of the ones spoken before Latin. Her first name, though, that he knows. He sometimes teases her about it, about how the ancient Greeks' version of it has actually become its own word in _nemesis_ , but today he is simply paying tribute. The Russian is likely more a dig against Steve, it being a language he's had all manner of trouble learning, though even he must know at least the words for hello and good bye.

Despite the problems still ahead, Natasha can't help but smile as she tucks her phone away. Talking to Sam always gives her that. If she sees Coulfi in Steve's sense of purpose and nobility, it's Coulfi's wisdom and calm that she finds echoed in Sam. While she will always miss the man who found her first and taught her not just how to be an immortal, but how to be human, the men who have followed in her long life also shape and inspire her – and keep her going.

*****

Novi Grad seems typical for a smaller city in Eastern Europe. Natasha doesn't think she's been in Sokovia since it had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but she sees nothing she's not expecting: old and tightly packed residences and shops next to historical churches and government buildings, interspersed with cold, institutional warehouses and tenements thanks to the Soviet occupation. It is places like this that makes her lose hope that they're making a difference, no matter how they try to help.

So very little ever changes for the majority of people living in places like Novi Grad. Someone is always there to take credit for what little industry the locals eke out if not even more, and few end up with little beyond what is necessary to survive. The students today are trying to bring about change, to wake their countrymen up, but she's seen it all before, played out in so many places, in so many times, and still the outcome is just corruption, misery and bare subsistence.

"I know what you're thinking," Clint says to her as they observe their quarry, a kid with hair so blond it looks white, jittering in place as he waits impatiently for a street vendor to hand over two servings. "That even with the Soviets gone, nothing has changed for the people. And you're right, but you are also wrong," he adds with a brief smile and a nod of his head toward the street before them. "There is no curfew here. No food lines or specific days when they can only buy their milk or meat or bread. It may not be much, may not be what we'd like to see for them, but what we do see is people out and interacting without worry that they are being watched by their neighbors or the government – "

"Just _us_ watching them – "

" – with the right to support what they desire, or protest what they do not," he rolls right over her, once more the eternal optimist. "Baby steps still take the child forward."

"You should write fortune cookies," she says sourly.

"Who says that I haven't?" he responds with a laugh and a nudge to her shoulder. "Glass half full or half empty, there is still water in it to drink. Or how about – "

"Pietro is on the move." This time when she interrupts, Clint goes silent and still beside her, all of his attention now on the boy, just as hers is. 

While acting as journalists might have given them better access since people nowadays grant interviews because they like to see themselves at least on the 'net, unfortunately, most reporters also want the exposure. She or Clint intentionally staying _off_ camera would make anyone suspicious. Perhaps paint them as government plants and thus dry up any source of information as the word got out. So it has left them to fall back on tried and true methods, like observation and hunting. 

She and Clint are very good hunters.

Not that Tony and the others haven't made it easy for them. Steve's drawing found a match in a series of clear social media images from the protests. Coming up with the boy's identity had proven more difficult given that the government had lost track of him after his parents had died years ago, but Natasha has no doubt that they've found the right guy as well as his name. Pietro Maximoff. Sokovian native, orphaned as a young teen and then a runaway from the government sponsored orphanage he'd been sent to. Tony had also found some accounts mentioning a sister, mostly in news articles around the time of the elder Maximoff's deaths, but could dig up no record of whether the sister had died along with the parents, been sent to the same or a different orphanage, or even what her name had been. All local birth and marriage records had been lost in the same shelling barrage that had killed Pietro's parents and, if there were church records, they hadn't yet been made digital for Tony's programs to comb through.

So they couldn't say for sure whether their newest immortal was that sister, or someone else to Pietro, and the photos they'd found of the two of them didn't give them enough to make even an educated guess.

As far as information on this morning's deaths, Tony had uncovered that while the dead from the protest had been taken to the local morgue, the two women amongst them were too old to be Pietro's companion. Still, there had also been enough people who'd sustained injuries in the initial confrontation that could have died after they'd fled after leaving the killing ground. 

Conversations with witnesses gave Natasha and Clint a better understanding of the chaos that had followed the police opening fire on the protestors than what few news reports were coming out so far. Gross underestimates of the number of injuries or even the number of protestors or police sent in to break it up; how a peaceful protest turned violent not because of the protestors, but due to heavy-handed tactics by the authorities and how even after shots got fired, most of the protestors moved to help each other and not meet violence with more violence. As it could take at least a day for any hospital or clinic records Tony might gain access to, to get updated, Natasha had rock-paper-scissored Clint to determine which of them would pretend to be the distraught family member asking nurses about their recent patients, and who got to stalk through the streets in the hopes of running across Pietro.

Clint had first gotten lucky with his paper covering her rock, and then in actually spotting the kid more quickly than they had any right to expect. Natasha hadn't finished even with the first clinic before she got the call, and so had been able to rejoin Clint to watch Pietro shop through the farmers market just before it closed for the day, and then decide on picking up chicken paprikash to go with his earlier purchases.

Something Natasha wished they'd had the opportunity to do themselves, as the last real meal she'd had had been the morning's breakfast, nearly thirteen hours ago.

"What do you want to do about the kid?" Clint asks as they start following him into the nearest collection of apartments near the university.

What Natasha really wants is to find the girl without the boy around, but that would mean waiting until morning at best, and assuming that he would leave someone who he knew had at least been badly hurt during the protests, which she rather thought he wouldn't. "If she's on the other end of his delivery, I want to get her out and us on the road tonight," she finally decides. "While I find a car, you take him down. If she's not there, we'll have to question him, so don't damage him too badly.

Clint sticks his tongue out at her, since he's always careful about the extent of collateral damage and doesn't need to be cautioned, but says nothing as Pietro is suddenly looking at the shadows like he's suddenly worried about being followed. She and Clint cross the street behind the boy at an angle, moving into a cross street and away from him, not that they move farther down it than to be out of sight. Pietro might be paranoid, but he's not particularly skilled in any kind of spycraft, so if he even noticed them in the first place, he falls for the ploy and quickly moves up to an obviously vacant building with its doors and windows boarded shut. They watch him move aside a piece of paneling to gain entrance. Clint points to the second floor that holds a window not only without boards, but also free of glass, and Natasha nods and peels off to temporarily steal a car.

Instead of a car, she finds a dilapidated van that was new in the last century, and has it hotwired and parked outside the building Pietro and Clint disappeared into within ten minutes. While Natasha could easily follow Clint's route and enter through the second level, they're going to want to take the girl out by the ground level if she is indeed within, so Natasha needs to see what kind of path difficulties they'll have if she doesn't come willingly.

Her first impression is that this isn't where Pietro is actually living. It has none of the typical trappings or smells of being used by addicts or long-term homeless, being more dusty than disgusting. Somewhere further in, there's a lantern or something providing light to help her maneuver, although it doesn't spill out far enough to show from the outside that the building is occupied. Natasha credits the boy for knowing how to keep himself hidden, and releases a silent sigh of relief that she can make out the distinctive sound of two voices, a girl's as well as what she assumes is the boy's. Before she congratulates herself too much, though, she hears a third, deeper voice. She frowns and pauses; chiding herself for not considering there might be more than Pietro and the girl to confront. That Pietro could have come back to his protest group to plan revenge for his girl's death, just because he only brought back food for two. A larger audience won't stop her, of course, but it might mean they will have to be more violent than Clint will be happy about.

She starts forward again with even more caution; if a look out has been set, she'd prefer to take care of them without the others becoming aware that their sanctum has been breached. Getting close enough to make out the conversation might be useful too.

" _– can help. It's what we do."_

This time her sigh is not silent. Nor is the curse she lets loose.

"And there are the dulcet tones of the woman I spoke of. Natasha Romanova," Clint continues, speaking louder in his accentless Croatian. "She knows how to call me a cocksucker in at least a thousand languages, although a third of those aren't spoken by anyone else anymore."

"I am much more worried about you being an idiot than a cocksucker," Natasha retorts, also speaking Croatian although they are both fluent in Sokovian. No doubt Clint felt it advantageous to convince the pair that they don't know the local language, which shows he hasn't completely gone mental. Croatian is a common second language in this region of the world.

When Natasha gains the opening into the main room, she sees that Clint is standing out of arms reach in front of the other two, so he's done two things right tonight. Resting on a worn but clean blanket at the feet of the one they've identified as Pietro, is a young woman who looks to be in her early twenties as well. Forever frozen to that age, she's an attractive waif who will constantly be underestimated and undervalued – much as Natasha has been all her life. Natasha will have to show her how that can work to her advantage if the girl decides to take up their fight. The boy is all belligerence and bravado, vibrating from the depths of his fear and anger.

"Tasha, may I introduce you to Pietro and Wanda Maximoff," Clint continues, waving his arms in an elaborate, showman's flourish as if he's done something special, ignoring the expression of exasperated frustration she aims at him.

The girl looks to Natasha, offering a nod and a smile along with an eye roll that makes it seems as if she's commiserating with Natasha over the inherent idiocy of their men.

"Wanda is his sister," Clint carries on. "His _twin_ sister. Who he saw get shot in the neck this morning, and who bled out in his arms, only for him to then watch the bullet get expelled from her body as she started breathing again while he carried her away from the violence. So that ship's sailed," he adds, arching his brow in a challenge since it is a reasonable explanation as to why he chosen to show himself before the both of them instead of rendering the boy unconscious as had been the plan.

Of course, how he found that out _before_ he showed himself –

"They've been hiding out all day, since there is apparently camera footage out there of Wanda's body before her resurrection that Tony hasn't found yet, discussing what to do next," Clint continues, laughing at her now since he seems to have covered himself nicely.

"I relayed our offer, and they've agreed to it, as long as we understand that it will be the both of them coming along to Vienna, and that we swear that they have the right to walk away after they've met everyone. That we promise not to hassle or follow them if they choose to leave after meeting the rest of us. I said sure, but that I don't speak for you."

Natasha looks the twins over more carefully before she turns her gaze back on Clint. While he's not as tense as the boy, he's still not as confident in the situation as his words imply. Something must have happened before the three of them reached the current state of wary non-hostility. Since the boy is still standing, unscathed, and since the two seem to be accepting the idea that not only is the girl immortal, but that she and Clint are also immortal without a demand of proof, Clint must have already given them that proof.

"I'm not used to people taking to this – to us – at face value," Natasha says to the twins, as if that's the only reason she's been standing there silent since she called Clint an idiot. The dynamic in front of her is wrong on several levels. Could the boy somehow think his twin's immortality is their fault?

"Well, I'm certainly not the second coming," the girl says in a dry tone that is accompanied by a wry expression that Natasha can appreciate. 

Another pragmatist, perhaps, practiced to offset the boy's volatility.

"Feeling the bullet being forced out of my body is a lot harder to explain than somehow it just missed anything vital and that Pietro didn't try hard enough to hear my heartbeat," the girl finishes with.

"So why is your brother still looking to defend you?" Natasha counters with, still trying to understand Clint's weird awkwardness or the depth of the boy's hostility. "Does he not believe we are like you? Does he think that despite what we've said, we are going to spirit you away and conduct mad experiments?"

"Ah, that was me," Clint explains, switching to English. "I let the kid put his knife in my gut before I took it away. He might be thinking I'm going to retaliate."

Natasha isn't sure if not being able to follow Clint's words is the reason behind the boy's deepening scowl, or because he does understand English and because Clint's right, as well as that he most likely had disarmed the boy quite easily even while injured. Not just shown up, but being rendered defenseless in front of a sister he's sworn to protect. The boy could also be disconcerted to discover that he is now the one who needs protection. The male ego is so easily bruised.

As for Clint, normally he's just as wary and critical as she is when interacting with a new immortal. Natasha supposes his deflecting her challenge to the girl could be due to the girl's age. In general, since he'd been born before either the patriarchal gender roles or the code of chivalry were adopted, Clint treats women as he treats men – fairly and with a belief that they can take care of themselves if they earn his trust, or with the end of his sword if they earn that instead. But he has a huge soft spot for kids and dumb animals, often going out of his way to pet strange dogs if the owners let him, or buying ice cream for a whole block of kids when he's out canvasing a mark.

What was it he'd first said of Wanda?

_Bright, passionate, not a revolutionary, but willing to stand up and do what is right._

Certainly such traits would appeal to Clint; Sam and Steve – even Thor – had sense of somberness and scruples that took getting used to after millennia of walking outside the rules of man, while Ultron, Bruce and Yelena had been troubled souls even before their first deaths, and then downright hostile upon meeting others like them.

Sometimes, too, you just clicked with someone. She and Clint certainly had when she and Coulfi had found him, as had Thor and Loki upon their initial meeting, or Yinsen and Bruce, and then Sam and Steve. For that first century, she and Yelena had connected too, until Yelena started seeing Natasha as a rival instead of a sister, and turned to Gao as her preferred mentor, before Gao had no more use for her and then killed Yelena.

Even with Pietro staying in her life, this girl – Wanda – could do worse than find a new big brother in Clint.

"Is there anything you need to gather before we leave?" Natasha asks the two, instead of dwelling on memories best kept locked away. "We will see that you get new passports and IDs, along with changes of clothing and toiletries after we get to Vienna." Getting blank, somewhat distressed looks in return, Natasha sighs.

You do realize that your former lives are over, right? You can probably get away with keeping your current names, especially if you relocate away from this part of Europe, but you shouldn't return to Sokovia for at least fifty years and you'll need to wait even longer before coming back to Novi Grad."

Right. This is the part Natasha forgot about and hates the most; why sometimes it's easier when they fight her and deny what they've become, because then it's only kidnapping and violence, before turning them over to someone more sympathetic, more empathetic.

"It's not just the chance of someone recognizing your name as a girl who got killed," she offers in explanation. "You no longer age, Wanda. At least not so anyone who knows you now will ever be able to tell. Bad enough that someone might see you in the next few days, after word has spread of your death, but running into you years from now, when you still looked the same as when they were younger, that is not something that can be explained away. This includes reaching out to any other family members. We have found it works best if you cut yourself from them cleanly, to let them believe that you are dead and allow them to grieve." 

She could force them into the van even now, of course, could play up the urgency and danger of lingering, the foolishness of going back to where someone might see and ask questions that can't or shouldn't be answered. Natasha would like to think she's not that cruel, but the reason behind her willingness to grant them an opportunity to take something with them from their former lives comes from bitter experience and the pain of seeing others when they'd first come into their immortality try to keep ahold of their first life. Alexei never did get over leaving his wife and kids, or Gao her clan, and it took Bruce years to stop going back to secretly support his old cohort. She rather suspects that Steve would have refused to leave Peggy and Howard behind, had they not by necessity become privy to his secret.

The twins exchange a look. "There is no more family for us, but I would like to keep some photos or a couple pieces of jewelry that belonged to our mother," Wanda finally says, looking shell-shocked, but also determined in this.

"How far away are we talking about having to go?" Clint asks with a scowl and a hint of impatience that is mostly for show, Natasha is certain.

Sometimes he'll offer the carrot after Natasha's stick, but more often he'll leave that to someone like Sam or Thor, and instead use an even bigger stick than Natasha's so she's no longer the focus of another's anger. Were anyone else to do that, she'd shut them down, but Clint's never thought her unable to handle the heat and occasional attempt at retaliation. He's just never wanted her to _have_ to. He was the same with Coulfi, with Bucky, and he's even done it with the others after he gets to know them better. It's just part of being Clint's family, him taking the hit for those he loves. She knows why he does it, and hates it, but will also never devalue the offering.

"Since this building is empty, you've obviously got someplace else where you're actually living," he continues. "Are you squatting there too, or renting? Do others live with you? Kudos on knowing not to go back there today, but even you shouldn’t go back there, Pietro. You can't lie for shit, and you wear your emotions on your body for anyone to read. Neighbors won't think anything of you disappearing right after Wanda's death, especially given it happened during what the government is calling an illegal protest. Let them think you've been arrested," he suggests.

"I am no criminal," Pietro denies hotly.

He's shifted from Croatian to heavily accented English, as if telling them he's caught them in their secret, when it's actually the opposite. He should have kept his knowledge of English hidden, maybe learned things she and Clint didn't mean to provide just yet. But then, most people don't have Natasha's level of paranoid thinking as a matter of habit, not necessity. 

"What, so you are volunteering to go for me? How do we know you aren't the criminal?" Pietro now spits out. “That you won't rob us?"

Clint laughs at the question, his laughter then deepening as Pietro's outrage grows. "Yeah, we arranged this whole thing. The protest, killing your sister, then finding you just so we can steal from a couple of kids," he says mockingly. "Sorry, kid, but you aren't going to own anything that I want. You don't have anything I don't already have, or that I can't buy again, a hundred times over," he steams over Pietro's indignation. "And even if that isn't true, I've already proven that there is nothing you can do to stop me if I _do_ decide I want any of your shit," he reminds Pietro nastily, before pulling out a respectable Eickhorn KM2000 from his pocket that must have belonged to Pietro (since Clint favors using a special forces, Glock knife for combat himself). He waves it like a red flag to a bull before he suddenly reverses his grip on it and holds it out for Pietro to take back.

"Stop running off with your mouth and think things through, kid," Clint softens his derisive tone. "You don’t want to trust us – to trust me – fine." He takes a step forward, when Pietro doesn't reach for the knife, shrugs and then squats down to set it at Pietro's feet; he respects a good weapon too much to have just dropped it.

"It's wise that you don't trust a couple of strangers," he acknowledges as he stands back up and steps back again. "But you don't have to be stupid, either. We've offered you help, which you need. Help which your sister _needs_. Take advantage of that. Take advantage of us. Get out of Novi Grad, get some flawless new identities, and then make a run for it when you get to Vienna, if that's what you feel you should do. Maybe you and Wanda _can_ make it on your own, even now, even given what she's become. You've done a hell of job of it so far, and that isn't sarcasm," he adds when Pietro's face darkens again. "From what we've unearthed, you had a shit childhood, but you've not let it keep you down. I respect that. Your resiliency and that you've, for the most part, kept your sense of values and decency."

Respect it, recognize it, because he knows firsthand how hard it is to not come out of a life like that thinking that the world owes you, and that it's okay to just take what you feel you're due. Natasha had stopped seeking her own angry recompense thanks to Coulfi, but Clint had never let himself fall so low.

"I promise, we're not your babysitters, nor jailers," he now tries to reassure Pietro, but also turns to appeal directly to Wanda. "Assholes, sure, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to do right by you two. We take care of our own. Which includes you, Pietro, since you've both made it clear that you're a packaged deal. "

Given how even Natasha is moved by his entreaty, she doesn't expect the twins to keep fighting and, indeed, in the next moment, Wanda is nodding and rising gracefully to her feet.

"We are not squatters and we do not have roommates. There are people who live in our apartment building who know us," Wanda tells them, also speaking English now. "We will accept your help in getting our things, and in getting out of the country. I would also like to get answers to a great many questions, so we will meet with the others. After that, there are no more bets."

"The saying is _all bets are off_ ," Clint corrects her, his tone soft and kind, with no hint of mockery. He also can't keep his smile from returning when Pietro crouches down to reclaim his knife.

And as Wanda shoots her brother a pointed look that has him backing off from whatever he'd been about to say.

"That's fine," Natasha says in agreement to Wanda's conditions, impatient, although not with them. She understands that getting everything out into the open is important, especially when it comes to trying to win over someone even though she's more of a _letting the chips fall where they may_ type of negotiator. "We'll answer the questions that we can, although I suggest that you wait on the big ones until we are all together. Some things there really are no answers for, but hearing differing perspectives might still help."

Wanda nods again and comes over in front of Natasha to offer her hand, which Natasha takes with genuine pleasure.

Not just bright and passionate, but with considerable poise for someone so young. Plus she's not one for posturing bullshit, even from her brother. No wonder Clint took a shining to her.

*****

As per Natasha's suggestion, neither Wanda nor Pietro pile them with questions about being immortal during the flight. Although their reticence might stem more from being terrified than actually obedient. Apparently neither of them had ever flown in a plane before, much less in a helicopter, something even Natasha is still uncomfortable doing herself, although she trusts Clint at the stick implicitly. He's sniping back at Pietro, who apparently chatters through his fear and now calls Clint ‘Old Man’, since Clint keeps calling him ‘Kid’. Wanda, like Natasha, stays out of it, since the conversation doesn't sound mean spirited.

What few questions the twins do ask are mostly related to Vienna and the people they are going to meet, which Natasha lets Clint answer too, as she's not one for small talk just to fill the quiet (not that it's quiet inside any helicopter; the only way they can talk and hear at all is because it had come equipped with a raft of headsets). Natasha isn't one to offer reassurances either, at least not before she gets to know people.

The flight takes less than an hour. Natasha spends the first minutes taking photographs to send to Tony so he can arrange for new passports, before texting Sam again to ask that he, Steve and Bruce go ahead and book a three bedroom suite at the Park Hyatt for a few days, if the Royal Penthouse Suite isn't available. Given that the twins have accepted the situation with grace, there is no reason to hide out in a musty bomb shelter even if it was converted into a reasonable bolt hole. The other three will no doubt be glad of the change to more comfortable accommodations. The Park Hyatt might not be as luxurious as Tony's villa in Monaco, but it has its own charms and is certainly better than doomsday prepper chic.

"What's going to happen next is that we'll catch the tram after we land to get from the hanger to Customs," Natasha finally speaks while Clint's linked into the tower to get his landing instructions. "Once we reach Customs, Clint and I will go first so you see how it's done, but basically you present your passport to the agent who will look it over and stamp it to allow you into the country. Your new identities reside in Symkaria. The agent might remark about this being your first trip outside your country, but they aren't going to question it. Say it's your gap year if you are asked, which means you are taking a year off to see more of the world before you finish college and get locked into a job. You've chosen Austria first, and that you will be staying in District 1."

"Will they search our bags?" Wanda asks. She is sitting up front next to Clint, scared but also curious about what he's doing as well as the countryside passing below them.

Pietro is more of a white knuckle flyer, sitting in back with Natasha, but he's tried very hard not to show his fear, by slumping and keeping his eyes closed as if he's calm enough to sleep, despite the conversations he keeps getting drawn into when Clint interacts with Wanda. Natasha isn't sure whether his inability to actually sit in stillness is his normal state, or a byproduct of his current fear; not that he'd kept still in the abandoned building either – or in the van.

"They might," Natasha confirms. "It'll be fine. Your jewelry is obviously old, but not so valuable that they will wonder why you've brought it when all of your clothes are casual. Pietro, Clint and I have Interpol permits to carry weapons, so let me bring in your combat knife."

That gets his eyes opening, though he only twists his head without lifting it from the back of his seat.

"Clint and I are traveling with you as your bodyguards," she explains. "Your family is wealthy enough to worry about kidnappings and ransoms."

He starts to say something, but stops and just nods. It's a good cover; can account for all of the weapons they have with them as well as why she and Clint might not know much about the twins, as they should have were they family or friends on holiday together.

"If anyone brings up anything about all of the photos you're carrying, just say you are in the middle of a project," Natasha then goes on, since it's the only other thing the twins have with them that might cause questions. "You shouldn't have to elaborate. As a rule, don't volunteer any extra information, but do answer all of their questions. Being so late in the evening, we will either get an agent who is tired and bored and just wants to go home, or someone who will be suspicious about everything because they hope to prove themselves good enough to get moved to an earlier shift. It's okay for you to be nervous; they expect that from anyone who's never gone through Customs before. If you get too scared, or get asked something you can't answer, just look to us and we'll step in and answer for you. As long as you aren't assholes about it and become hostile or patronizing, it'll be fine," she repeats. "Oh, and no Sokovian. Do you know German?"

"No," Pietro responds, while Wanda says, "not well."

"Personally I'd go with English when you're speaking to a local," Clint interjects; apparently back on their shared frequency. "You can even with the Customs agents, but you could also use Croatian. They're going to know both. Chances are they'll want to steer you to German, so counter with Latverian, given it's also Symkaria's official language. Everyone hates Latverian, because they hate Von Doom, That'll get them going in whichever language you first decided on. The benefit of using English is that they'll then keep things to basic questions and common answers, and likely limit them from keeping you longer just for something to do. As far as communicating with shop keepers and waiters once we start taking in the town, English or Croatian should work with most, but one of us _will always_ be with you, and we all know Austrian-German, even Steve, so you don't have to worry about being understood."

"So much for not being our jailors or baby-sitters, Old Man," Pietro says snidely, back to keeping his eyes closed, his arms now crossed over his chest.

"Jeeze, Kid, for like three days," Clint responds with a quick look back over his shoulder. "You can give us three fucking days. If you must, think of it as payment for getting you free of Novi Grad and getting you set up to go anywhere else."

"I wasn't saying we are planning to sneak away from you," Pietro retorts. "Just pointing out that you were wrong earlier, when you said what you weren't jailors or baby-sitters. But don't worry; you didn't lie about being an asshole. What?" he then asks when Clint stays silent. "You didn't see that coming?"

Clint still doesn't respond, and in the next few seconds, he's cut the rest of their headphones while he begins their drop, setting them down near one of the private hangers in the general aviation side of the airport. The silence continues as they collect their bags and get their tram, the twins too caught up in nerves and excitement to break it. Natasha recovers the new passports one of Tony's people hid for them on the tram, and hands them over, making it look like she's been in possession of them the whole time as part of her function of protecting them. At customs they find only a handful of other travelers and, happily, only bored agents who have no reason to hassle or detain them. All of their passports are flawless, of course, while the twins are subdued but also pass without drawing undue attention.

Natasha is pleased to see their excitement return as they try to take in everything at once while moving through the main terminal toward the exits. The Viennese airport is rather boring when compared to more modern and stunning facilities in some of the Middle Eastern or Asian countries, but it is still a major European hub that sees its fair share of passengers passing through from countries whose people the twins have likely never seen before, given how Sokovia holds little of interest for the oil rich from Dubai or a tech giant whose home is in Singapore or Tokyo. Natasha has considered herself as a cosmopolitan for decades, centuries really, but she has spent so much of today in long ago memories that the panoply of languages and skin colors around them impress even her in the moment.

Vienna itself shows a much more organic mix of old-world elegance and modern practicality compared to Novi Grad. Clint hires a taxi, and they let the driver regale the twins with the city's history and sites as he drives them to their hotel in the center of the city – the _Innere Stadt_ \-- while pointing out the nearness of Saint Stephen's Square and Cathedral as well as the _Kärntner Straße_ shopping district once they arrive. As for the hotel itself, it sits in a World Heritage site and was a venerable bank ten years previous, but once inside the lobby, it is the epitome of Old European sophistication and flair, and has become one of Natasha's favorite places to stay whether she gets the penthouse suite or not.

While they are all woefully underdressed for their surroundings, no one bats an eye upon their entrance. Natasha is still delighted to see Sam instantly coming out to greet them from where he'd been waiting in the bar next to the lobby.

"Loki chose to keep me company as we waited for your arrival," Sam offers quietly after he greets her and then Clint, just nodding at the twins. "He's willing to have me escort our guests in down here to meet him, and then leave without interacting with anyone else, if that's what you prefer. Thor has gone on up to visit with Bruce and get a chance to get to know Steve for the next couple of hours, but he’s okay with it if we want them to leave again."

"Loki and Thor?" Natasha hears Pietro mutter to Wanda from behind her and, yeah, she probably should have sketched the barebones of this situation with those two. Or at least mentioned the names those two are currently using. Most people, of course, think they're just a weird homage to the Norse gods, not that they were the inspirations for them.

"Are we in the penthouse?" she asks first before giving her answer.

Sam nods, handing over two of the handful of keys he pulls out of a pocket. "We also took the two connecting rooms. No one's claimed any of the bedrooms yet, but Bruce has claimed the largest kitchen and is ready to throw something together for a late dinner if you need it."

" _One_ of the kitchens?" comes from Wanda with a squeak.

"Food sounds like a great option, right now," Clint says enthusiastically.

Not just because they skipped dinner and interrupted Pietro and Wanda's, but because Bruce is a fantastic cook.

"We can break bread with Loki," Natasha allows, figuring that's just as important to mention. "Go ahead and collect him."

Sam nods and moves away. Clint turns toward the twins before Natasha does, and offers a quick, quiet explanation.

"Okay, so Loki is one of us, but he did something pretty shitty a while back. He was supposed to stay away for a hundred years, but since it's vital that you meet him, he's come back. Things will be awkward, might even get violent, but that's one of the reasons Tasha picked this place – to remind us not to indulge in our baser instincts and damage the antiques." he says with a self-deprecating smile.

"Wanda, he'll be as charming as fuck to you, because he likes to think himself as a gentleman in the old sense of the word. He'll also be on his best behavior with the rest of us for at least this first meeting, but all of that cynicism and suspicion you had when you met us?" he brings up, his smile turning sour. "Let's just say there is a reason why the name Loki is synonymous with lies and deceit."

Reacting to their alarm, and because even when he has reason too, Clint has a hard time holding onto grudges, he sighs and softens his stance and expression. "Don't worry. For the most part, he's more annoying than malicious. He enjoys getting under people's skin, and he's pretty damn good at it too. But he more of an obnoxious little brother, or that weird cousin who wants to fit in, but doesn't know how to play nice with others," he temporizes, his expression now a mixture of embarrassment, frustration, and even a hint of fondness, which Natasha finds herself matching.

"The one thing you can trust Loki with is protecting our secrets, since doing so protects his foremost," she adds to the picture. "He makes no apology for looking out for himself before any of us, but he'll have your back if he pledges to cover you. Just remember that his interpretation of defending you might not be the same as yours."

It's obvious that Wanda and Pietro have plenty of questions, but once more they swallow them and simply acknowledge Loki as they did Sam, remaining quiet without even introducing themselves as he and Sam come back to before them.

"You are looking well, Cyfiawnder," Loki say to Clint, who simply snorts and holds up his hand.

"An appeal to my reputation of fairness, _Loki_?" I'm surprised you didn't go with Zadkiel, in a petition of mercy," Clint responds in derision.

"Is that what you want from me? For me to beg for – " Loki stops himself, taking in not only Natasha's glare, but also Sam's, as well as Wanda and Pietro's expressions of discomfort and apprehension. He inclines his head as if apologizing, though he, of course, doesn’t actually come out an offer one. Clint simply laughs with no trace of humor, as there are no surprises here, as well as no point in getting into it out in public. Instead he then turns his back on Loki and heads off to the private elevator that will take them up to their home for the next few days.

Another glare from Natasha keeps Loki silent as they move to follow. Considering that the suite that they are heading to inhabits both the fifth and sixth floor and is larger than the apartment the twins had been renting in Novi Grad (even without the two added connecting hotel rooms), there is plenty of room for Loki and Clint to keep out of each other's way. Rooms for Wanda and Pietro to disappear into as well, should everything get to be too much. Along with several lovely outdoor terraces that they can escape to for privacy.

Although it is easy to dwell on Loki's misdeeds since the worst of them was so recent, Loki _has_ always been more about mischief than true malice, and there isn't one of them – except Steve and perhaps Sam – who hasn't had their moments of tyranny, brutality, or callousness during the course of their long lives. Like Coulfi first identified him, Loki is their scorpion. He lives according to his nature, without allowing past deeds to shame or mire him in guilt. At times contrary and almost always capricious, still Loki continues to choose to take part in the mission that Coulfi set before Natasha to improve the human condition, despite having no professed reason to do so beyond recognizing that he would be miserable striking out on his own.

"Is it too weird for the two of you to share a bed?" Natasha asks the twins after the elevator door closes and they begin to ascend, for once needing to be the one to fill the awkward silence with something. "I was thinking the four of us would share the master bedroom with its king bed. It also has two chaise lounges that Clint and I will be fine sleeping on. Though, if you'd rather, we can kip out on a couch in the common area so we're at least still nearby."

Fuck. She's babbling.

"The other in-suite bedroom has two double beds, but it's tiny and lacks any style," she continues, because even if she's recognized what she's doing and why, Natasha might as well finish making a fool of herself.

"We can take the loungers," Wanda quickly offers, ignoring the faint moan that illustrates Pietro's opinion of that, but Clint takes an interest in the conversation and shakes his head.

"Take the bed. It's sinful," he tells them. "And plenty big for two without there being anything hinky."

"Hinky?" Pietro questions.

"It sort of means weird, but also wrong. Like sleeping with your brother," Clint explains, a blush clearly taking over his face.

Before anyone can embarrass themselves further, the elevator comes to a stop before opening into a foyer directly a part of the suite instead of a common hallway shared amongst the other rooms on this floor.

My friends," Thor boisterously calls out in German as he rises from the sunken couch that is just as sinful as the bed in the main sleeping chamber. He flings his arms open wide and moves to better greet them. 

Thor is rarely anything but larger-than-life, and it _has_ been nearly seventy-five years since they last met. At nearly a foot taller than Natasha, he is a true Viking warrior – or a Norse god – and one of the most joyful and handsome men that Natasha knows.

Hell, in truth, they are all Hollywood or Runway attractive and practically archetypes, something that Bruce thinks is tangibly related to their immortality; that their bodies' abilities to heal might have begun before their first deaths, optimizing their genetics to produce the traits humanity has found most pleasing throughout all of history and erasing any blemish or flaw. From Steve, all farm boy sweetness as well as an Aryan poster boy of blond perfection, ironic since he spent his first life fighting against the idea of The _Übermensch,_ to Sam's encouraging smile, sarcastic tongue, and classically beautiful face, along with an inherent decency that puts everyone at ease instead of intimidating them.

Or Loki, who not only had impressed the ancient, proto-Norsemen into thinking him a god, but who, along with Bucky, had served as inspiration for the Aes Sídhe, the both of them too beautiful to be mortal, with those cheekbones that could cut glass, and their smoldering dark looks. Or Bruce, whose cherub, genial face had inspired many a Renaissance painter, including Michelangelo, and who wore his hard-fought calm in childlike wonder, though even his rage had its own dark magnificence.

Yelena and Ultron had been their fallen angels, sleek in their personification of sin and desire, at least until they also began to believe in their glorification, while Coulfi, Alexei, Gao, and Yinsen had all met their first death at an age much older than the rest of them, the perfect examples of the ancient Greek's concept of _hōraios_ or the beauty of being of one's hour, and the Japanese understanding of _Sabi_ – the serenity that comes with age. 

And then there is Clint, who might not fall as much in line with the modern standard of beautiful or handsome men as much as the others, but with a body to rival Glykon’s statue of Hercules (and Steve's), and a smile that charms not from its sophistication, but from its honesty. Natasha’s face has played muse once or twice itself; gracing books, galleries, and even a boudoir or two, and she is quite aware that her beauty has granted her many more favors than it's held her back even with it being just another weapon in her arsenal to use.

Wanda, as Natasha has already noted, will face many of those same challenges, but she has a warmer, more gentle and approachable exquisiteness that should serve her better than the cold, porcelain perfection Natasha has been accused of cultivating. Even Pietro has a similar appeal like his twin, with his white hair and his dark scruff; his mixture of bravado and vulnerability that will likely fade with age, but could also grow into a distinguished sophistication if he finally learns to control his emotions and darker traits. 

"How fare you?" Thor asks as he reaches them.

"The better to see you again," Clint answers in English, maneuvering to let himself get engulfed by Thor's crushing hug first, so that it's rushed through in Thor's haste to also greet Natasha.

She promises Clint retaliation with her eyes, but she also knows that _he_ knows she's not serious. While Thor might come close to cracking a rib or two – has even done so in the past – his affection and exuberance is genuine and makes it impossible not to welcome and sometimes even crave one of those hugs.

"So who do we have here?" Thor then asks as he releases Natasha and turns his attention on the twins, taking Clint’s cue and now speaking in English.

"I am Wanda Maximoff," Wanda performs her own introduction in her exotically accented English. She makes no step forward to be swept up into a hug herself, though Thor is offering unabashedly. "My brother, my _twin_ ," she emphasizes with a hand gesture toward Pietro, clever enough to have picked up that that is an explanation for Pietro's inclusion the rest of them shouldn't question. "Pietro."

"Well met, friend, and sister," Thor nods solemnly to each of them. "I am Thor," he tells them with a thump of his hand on his chest.

"As in the god of Thunder out of Norse mythology?" Pietro asks with great skepticism.

Thor shrugs, not so much in modesty, Natasha knows, but because such attributions have no more meaning to him than any derision might. Thor is just simply Thor (even when others called him Hercules and Ananiel), with nothing more to prove and no one he feels he needs answer to but himself.

"I am no god," he assures the twins solemnly, but with a twinkle in his eye that seems to belie his words. "But I have wielded hammer and axe in my day, as well as a sword. And I can attest that such weapons will spark and wreathe when struck by lightning. When the ancients saw me survive such strikes while those around me did not, a myth was born." Now he winks at them, further letting them in on his secret. "In truth, I found no reason to gainsay such fanciful tales, as fear allowed me to win battles as much as my strength."

"And he is your brother, Loki?" Wanda asks, less disbelievingly, but still with a tone of incredulity.

"Brother by choice, although none of us can prove or deny that we might trace a common lineage were we but to spend the time." Thor looks over to Loki, who is scowling, not so surprisingly, since he generally disclaims any notion of kinship, which is why Thor has always been quick to bring it up. But tonight Loki is also unconsciously moving closer, as if seeking Thor's protection in the face of these questions and the more to come. As if their time in exile has finally caused Loki to realize that found family is as important as any flesh one.

"Brother of my heart," Thor continues fondly, "as Loki _became_ next, after I did. We two have a commonality from our _before_ lives, customs and beliefs compared to the others, as we were originally born in the same general region of Juteland, though five hundred years apart."

"Are we allowed to ask your ages?" Wanda asks next, curious, awed, perhaps even a little horrified. "If you served as the inspiration for the Nordic gods, that puts you … " she shakes her head. "Can you really be so old?" she asks in little more than a whisper.

Thor nods, but is also shrugging in a less common show of humility from him. "Natasha and Clint are older still, born before the concepts of tribes or gods or even language became something more than just what was life. Even by the time of my birth, we still did not track days as man does now. Bruce is our scholar," he then says, with a gesture to the opening toward the kitchen that Bruce stands in. "He has pinned eras to our memories, but before we get into all that, you must come in and set down your burdens. Food has been promised, and I have always found that tales go down better with a pleasing drink."

That breaks the tableau they'd all unwittingly frozen into from the moment they departed from the elevator. Natasha leads the twins into the master bedroom that they might indeed ease their burdens – or at least their bags – and then spend a few moments refreshing themselves and master their thoughts. Clint follows but just for the time it takes him to drop his own bag and to unarm himself, giving Natasha a rueful expression as he does so. She gives him a nod, and goes so far as to strip herself of Pietro's knife, but she keeps her gun. Not so much because she doesn't trust Loki or the twins; that she believes any of them would misbehave. She is not just pragmatic, but also fatalistic. While she doesn't expect trouble from her friends, she knows that trouble will come eventually, and so prefers to be prepared. Leaving the knife where Pietro will see it, Natasha also leaves the room so that the twins can have a few moments alone.

Returning back to the large common area living room, she accepts a glass of exquisitely flavored white wine from Steve, along with a less demonstrative hug, and then another, warmer hug from Bruce although he still slaps at her hand when she follows him back into the kitchen and grabs at a slice of carrot from the stir fry he's preparing. Seeing that he has things well in hand (and not that she's much help with cooking in the first place), Natasha winds her way back into the main salon and notes that Clint and Loki have stepped out onto one of the suites’ four terraces. So she instead rejoins Steve and they take seats on one of the ridiculously comfortable couches that not so coincidently also has a very clear view of that terrace and its occupants. Thor and Sam are making a better pretense of not watching Clint and Loki, but Natasha has no doubt that they still are.

"How often has something been that serious between any of you?" Steve asks her with a small gesture toward Clint and Loki, quietly enough that, due to their own conversation, Thor and Sam likely won't overhear.

Out of consideration of Thor's feelings, Natasha supposes.

She holds up her glass as if she's studying the clarity of the vintage while she decides how she wants to answer. "I'm surprised you've waited seventy-five years to ask. I'm even more surprised that Sam or Bruce never volunteered that information when they were bringing you up to speed on everything else."

"You scared me in that first year," Steve admits, surprising her again. His face then floods with embarrassment, something Natasha still debates within herself as to whether it's caused by Steve's innate goodness, or from a more likeable flaw of just being awkward around her even after so many years.

"Peggy said you weren't as cold as you seemed to be," he tries to apologize.

Badly. And without looking in Natasha's direction.

"But then I hadn't really had that much experience with women back then," he then admits. "And while Peggy scared me too, I fell in love with her the instant she picked up the gun and shot me because Howard was too scared to verify what he'd seen with my first death. From then I was more interested in charming her and leaving you alone."

His face takes on that expression that always seems to grace it when he thinks about Peggy, a combination of awe and gratitude, along with disbelief that Peggy had ever given him the time of day. And so much love, a love that rivals Clint's and Bucky's for all that it had lasted so few years in what will be the rest of Steve's life. Natasha's happy to see that there is also a beginning of acceptance there in his eyes; that Steve can indulge in his memories of her without all of the raw grief that defined him during Peggy's decline and death a few years back. Otherwise that long life will be barren, with the potential of being cut short by his own hand. She wonders if the growing closeness she's been sensing between him and Sam has something to do with Steve's moving on, or perhaps even his fascination with Tony, not that Steve would ever do anything there unless Tony – unless his fiancé, Pepper – made the first move. Fortunately, if that does turn out to happen, Sam is quite open-minded about polyamory.

"Afterward, it seemed rude to ask," Steve continues with not so much an _awe shucks_ attitude she often accuses him of adopting, but simply a matter-of-fact one. "Especially since no one else was bringing Loki or Thor up. It took me years to figure out that even after all of your lives, all of the years you've lived through, you are still making it all up as you go along. That there aren’t any _rules._ "

Something it seems like pains him, but then Natasha's kind of pissed off about that too. She might not like following rules, but she does appreciate the certainty that they provide.

"By then it felt even more awkward to be the one asking about him, however, and so I just let it go," Steve goes on admitting. "It's not like you all weren't keeping me busy anyway, showing and teaching me plenty of the other things. I guess I figured you'd eventually get around to telling me about exiles and other punishments – hopefully before you needed to."

There are times that Natasha wishes Steve's graciousness was an affectation; it would make dealing with him easier. Let her respond with sarcasm or mockery. Make her feel comfortable enough to tease him directly. Those wishes, though, are her character flaw, not his. It's just that with Steve, Natasha feels old. Not so much from her years, but because of his lack of them. Because he accorded her a respect from the very start, one that she doesn't feel she's yet earned from him.

"Steve, you do know that I'm not really in charge, right?" she has to point out, even if it's not the take away he is expecting from her. "That we're a _cooperative_ and that you don't have any obligation to do something I or anyone else suggests if you don't want to? They look to me because I'm the oldest, not because I have any special wisdom or even a real vision."

"I promise, ma'am, if I disagree, I'll let you know," he turns to look at her, responding _so_ earnestly that he has to be admonishing her, albeit kindly.

"I have never had a problem standing up for my beliefs, much to the disgruntlement of my other COs, too," he adds, no longer quite so deliberately nice, and with more of a hint of the mule-headedness the others have ascribed to Steve but that Natasha really had never experienced herself.

"I imagine we'll get there at some point," he then tells her. "But battles don't get fought by dithering and wars don't get won by committee. Someone has to make a final decision, and the way I see it, that's you in the grand scheme of things, something I'm just fine with."

"For now," she can't help but say.

He smiles and nods. "For now," he concedes. "So, internal conflicts between any of us?"

She shrugs. "Fighting on opposites sides in a physical battle rarely mattered. That could actually be fun," she admits. "We'd treat it as a competition; a way to measure ourselves against one another. Perhaps, fortunately, few of our disagreements or grudges ever stem from personal clashes. And we simply outlive most external influences."

It isn't so much that Natasha is having a hard time answering, it’s more that she's never really had to think about it quite so baldly. The world that Yelena and then Steve had been born in shifted in years instead of centuries or longer, so their way of seeing things – their expectations and _eagerness_ to affect societal change – also got measured in a blink of an eye to how it had been for so long. Natasha likes to think that they'd all done a decent job of adapting over the eons, of letting go of outdated thinking and embracing not just new technologies but redefining the way they value the immaterial as well as the material, but there are still times in which she finds herself struggling to articulate how the so very long measure of her life has shaped the person that she is. 

"Our priorities shift and while our lives truly dictate long-term outlooks, those years don't guarantee any special insights or make us infallible," she still tries to explain. "What they do grant us is a peculiar understanding of what ultimately matters. Regimes fall every day. Weeping over that – or blaming one of us for that is a waste of water and energy. For the next few decades, we'll find ways of letting Loki know that we're still furious with him, but the passive-aggressive retaliation and general shit behavior will eventually fade. No one is going to forget what he did, but we will come to terms with it in time."

"Find the long term perspective," Steve offers up.

Natasha nods. "Because ultimately, each other are all that we really can hold onto. Loki didn't bring about Bucky's death intentionally, but even if he had, I expect that eventually we would still call him back, if only to exert some control over his behavior. We banished him in hopes that he would understand the wrongness of what he did. So that he will make a different choice in the future. To have cast him out for longer, for forever, only fosters our own darker urges until we've become no better than the one we are punishing, and in turn, we might raise an even greater darkness within them and bring forth a villain of our own making."

"Like Lü Zhi Gao."

Again Natasha nods. "And Ultrondius. Loki is simply self-absorbed, a flaw no worse than my unmerciful bluntness or your reluctance to acknowledge nuance," she points out with a small smile that Steve returns. "At least Loki realized that with the power and adulation that he sometimes thinks he wants also comes with inherent responsibilities and obligations that he definitely does not want. We imposed enough of those on ourselves to want to take on more. Except, perhaps, you. Not that I believe that you seek power or adulation."

"Definitely not," Steve says with fervor. "I have no desire to be celebrated and revered. If I'm judged, let it be for my actions, not by my commands."

"A character _virtue_ of a natural leader. And a good man."

"I – "

"Dinner," Bruce interrupts, probably to both Natasha and Steve's relief, given where their conversation had started to turn. 

"I will call Clint and Loki in," Thor volunteers.

"I'll notify the twins," Natasha agrees to in return.

"Does anyone need their drinks changed or refreshed?" comes Sam's offer as they all move to pay respect to Bruce's efforts and sit down together, even if they don't all intend to eat.

The twins take seats at the table – next to Clint, Natasha notices in amusement, though they could have chosen the chairs next to Sam or by Thor, as well the two on either corner of her end position. Bruce's table tonight is set for sixteen, expressly to offer the twins a choice in who they gravitate to.

"We never finished introductions," Bruce is the first to greet the twins this time. "I'm Bruce. I usually do the cooking when we're together, something I enjoy, which is a good thing since most of these other miscreants are surprisingly bad at it, or are just too lazy," he adds with a glare toward Clint. "If there is anything special you'd like in the next few days, let me know and give me a list of your favorite ingredients. I'm not averse to sharing the kitchen if you would prefer to take care of your own meals, but there is another, smaller one you can also use if you'd rather cook without kibitzers or sneak thieves stealing your ingredients. As far as my role in group activities, I'm mostly support and prefer not to work directly in any conflict or action."

"So you all _do_ take an active hand in conflicts?" Pietro asks, his voice a mix of condemnation and hope as food starts getting passed around. "Is that why you were in Sokovia? For the protest?"

"In the past we played a much greater role in the shaping of nations, but for now we try to right smaller wrongs. To aid people, especially those who do not have a voice or champion," Thor responds, with a hint of regret in his expression, but then he had been their greatest warrior. He helps himself to generous spoonfuls, while Loki passes on anything more than some cubes of cheese and a handful of grapes, which could either mean the two of them had already eaten this evening before making their way to Vienna, or Loki's stomach is reacting to his stress level, as is sometimes the case.

Natasha figures she’d have her own trouble eating even with having so little food today, but the smell of Bruce's cooking distracts her from her own stress.

"We came to Sokovia for Wanda. No other reason and it was only me and Tasha because we were already in Bulgaria when we all felt her die," Clint answers Pietro's questions; the one he asked as well as the one he'd only hinted at. Food has always meant comfort to Clint, so he's not shy in his takings.

"Self-determination is important to both the individual and the country," Sam speaks up, also queuing on the unspoken part of Pietro's question. "Through trial and error, we've concluded it is better that we stay away from the throne, as an active ruler as well as the man behind the curtain. The saying about power and corruption could have been written because of us." He shakes his head as well at some dark memories, even if Ultron is just a cautionary tale to him as he'd not yet been born to have to face and deal with that immortal's vile excesses.

"There is no way we can stop all shitty things from happening," he continues, with more than a hint of contriteness now in his tone. "No one heeds the lessons anyway, if someone else does the task for them. I'm Sam," he then offers as he passes along a large bowl of rice. "Sorry for not introducing myself in the lobby. I normally partner with Steve in field work, and the others usually come to me or Bruce when they just need someone to listen. Talk to whoever you feel comfortable with, but know that my door is always open to questions or even if you just need to vent."

Raising his hand like the Boy Scout he is, Steve says "I'm Steve, the youngest in the group except now I guess that's you, Wanda. I am still trying to figure out how I feel about what's happened to me, and what it's going to mean years from now. To wrap my head around the fact that years really means centuries or more, so if you want to commiserate, I'm your guy. The thing I _have_ figured out is that I have a place here with these people, and that I am grateful for it. We all get that you're scared, and overwhelmed. That you may not be ready to decide anything for a while, and that that _while_ might be years. Or centuries. You are still going to be welcome."

"And I am Loki as you have been told," Loki introduces himself from his spot opposite Natasha, taken so that no one felt an obligation to sit next to him although, of course, Thor had. "The perennial black sheep in the family, though I like that Clint has named me scorpion. I am no counselor, no champion, for you or for the world. But I do believe in the concepts of loyalty and family, and as you are now one, you will have the other from me. Should that ever change, I will tell you first, but for now, I am sure you still have questions that you feel are more important than knowing who we are."

The twins exchange a look that ends when Wanda nods her head and defers to Pietro to go first.

"Am I immortal too?"

They all look to Bruce, who doesn't look happy to field his question, but steps up gamely anyway, since he's the only one who might be able to speak of it with some authority. "Ah, we don't know? You're our first set of twins. We do know immortality is not inheritable, but you're definitely a special case. The trouble is that there is also no way to know, short of killing you. The accelerated healing doesn't kick in until after death. I mean, maybe, we could take you to the brink, but if you're not …" he raises his hands and shrugs.

"We will not be doing that," Wanda says with complete finality and a glare not only directed to Bruce and the rest of them, but to Pietro too, who also raises his hands, him in contrition.

"Okay," Pietro tries again around a mouthful of food. "Then how did this Bucky guy you've been talking around, die? He was one of you, right? Immortal? So what happened? I thought you _can't_ die."

Utter silence is the immediate response. Pietro has to know his question is inelegantly asked at best and even Thor now has a frown on his face (though from sadness more than anger). But Pietro just lifts his chin and meets the corresponding awkward and uncomfortable stares without backing down. Natasha takes a breath to save Clint from having to tell what happened, but Loki beats her to it and she makes sure she acknowledges his gesture, as all unexpected but appreciated behavior should be.

"Immortal is an inexact word," Loki says, meeting Pietro's gaze – and Wanda's – before he turns to contemplating his drink. "We can die. We _do_ die. But as long as our bodies are intact, we can heal from, well, anything that happens to us. Right up until we just don't."

"Even within the rest of humanity, when hearts and lungs stop, when brains stop all activity, it takes time for full cellular death," Bruce goes for explaining the science behind it, which isn't what Pietro asked, but is useful information anyway, so Natasha doesn't intervene.

Unfortunately, she doubts Pietro will be dissuaded for long, and it is information that Wanda does need to know.

"While some biological function continues, our bodies heal," Bruce continues, though he is being careful not to let himself fall into lecture mode, as this isn't some esoteric, intellectual topic.

"Bones, tissue, nerves, brain cells gets restored no matter how catastrophic the injury and, yes, that even includes regrowing limbs. But trust me," Bruce adds in the voice of experience, his expression as serious as Natasha has ever seen it. "That isn't a bonus, isn't something you want to experience. Our bodies heal, but we still feel the pain of the injury, along with even more agony as everything regenerates. We're pretty much helpless while the limb gets regrown, and the more mass needed to heal, the longer it takes."

Bruce is the only one of them who actually hasn't been incapacitated, not when he'd lost a hand once, not even the time his arm got hacked off from above his elbow. Fighting through all of that pain, though, had only made it – and his berserker rage – last even longer. The fallout, the sheer amount of indiscriminate damage that had occurred had been the reason he'd retired from the battlefield.

Bruce's expression turns speculative. "I'm not sure what happens if head and body get separated – we're not something out of a Hollywood movie after all. I imagine that eventually the body would regrow from the head, but I don't see any of us giving it a go, even for science."

  
"It wouldn't make two of you?" Pietro asks, sounding more fascinated than grossed out, unlike a few others at the table, Natasha included.

At least the stir fry and rice is mostly vegetables, and nothing else has a red sauce, or remotely resembles brain matter.

Bruce shrugs. "As it's never happened, I can't say for sure, but I believe that while modern science pronounces someone brain dead when they can no longer register any activity, there is still something going on at the molecular level, and as long as that keeps going, we heal. So the part of the body that is disconnected from the brain just becomes meat."

"We heal and we expel all foreign matter when that's happening, so if you were planning on getting a tattoo at some point, that's out," Steve speaks up, turning the conversation toward a less disturbing aspect of their immortality. "Piercings too. You can do them, but the jewelry will just get expelled, and if you try a closed loop, it'll tear through your skin and just end up making a mess."

"So what does kill us?" Wanda asks, bringing the question around again although she's respectful enough not to mention Bucky by name this time.

It's the first time Wanda has openly acknowledged she is one of them, but Natasha's gratification is tempered by the actual answers to Wanda's question. "As Loki said, sometimes we just stop recovering from injury or disease," she repeats. "It happened to the oldest of us, several millennia after he discovered his immortality, when he succumbed to his wounds during the Trojan War. But Yinsen, who was only six hundred years old when he covered our retreat during a skirmish in England's Hundred Years War, also stopped healing and died from his wounds, so age doesn't seem to be a factor.

"With Alexei," Natasha continues, taking a deep breath to grant herself a moment, "eventually he found the right combination of materials and reactions to thoroughly blow himself up. I suppose as long as the rate of decay from radioactive exposure exceeds the speed in which our cells regenerate, that will kill us too," she adds, not that imagining that is really any easier than reliving the scene of Alexis' suicide. Still, it does lack any emotional component, at least for now.

"Certain corrosive chemicals also work," Clint mentions in a quiet, sorrowful voice. "If there are enough of them to dissolve our body all at once."

"Really, is this appropriate dinner conversation?" Loki interrupts, his expression one of distaste as well as discomfort.

"Really, Loki?" Bruce questions. " _You're_ squeamish?"

"Not in the slightest," Loki responds, dripping disdain, but that is the only reason he has any color in his cheeks. "But our young companion is looking a little green and I do not imagine it's because she, too, is a practitioner of – "

"Loki, enough!" Thor warns him, covering Loki's hand with his own and pressing hard enough that Loki can't escape from the hold, although Natasha can see no hint of effort on Thor's part.

Yes, perhaps Bruce's experimentation with drugs is a conversation best brought up at another time. Especially as Loki meant to goad Bruce, not to offer further insight into Wanda's new family.

"Should I stop?" Natasha asks Wanda.

Wanda gamely shakes her head. "I need to know, and it is not my stomach that is bothered, but my heart. I can't imagine just how much you all have seen, though you are painting some disturbing pictures."

Natasha nods and steals a quick glance back to Clint. She knows he'd prefer to be anywhere but here for the rest of this discussion, just as Natasha has no stomach to continue it. But he stays out of loyalty and support, and she speaks out of responsibility and remorse. While poor Wanda (not to mention an also white-faced Pietro), continues to sit there in quiet bravery, and the rest of her brothers also sit and offer their own support for getting through this difficult subject.

"Gao killed Yelena using sulfuric acid, and for that betrayal, we in turn condemned Gao and executed her in the same fashion," Natasha intones, accepting Clint's grasping hand, taking comfort as well as, hopefully, giving it. "We lost Bucky in the furnaces of the Kreischberg extermination camp. Just burning a body isn't enough. It has to be utterly consumed."

They'd first learned that, when they'd tried and condemned Ultrondius, less than two centuries after he'd become one of them.

Wanda brings her hand to her mouth; the table falling silent again as even silverware and glasses are stilled. The horror of the Third Reich still stuns the soul, no matter how many other terrible things humanity does to one another. Yelena's (and Gao's) deaths were no less horrific, but at least they were personal. A small grace, perhaps, but deaths certainly easier to understand. And justify.

"So, no holy ground and _there can be only one_?" Pietro breaks the silence, his expression all exaggerated innocence, and showing a remarkable sensitivity while incidentally making up for his clumsy-footed question from before.

"I think I would make a good Prince of the Universe," Sam plays along with faked conceit, even striking a pose, splaying his hands under his chin.

"Loki certainly thinks and styles himself one," comes from Clint, along with a bold stare that just begs Loki to strike back.

Once more showing the underlying graciousness that makes him bearable to live with despite his selfishness and wholly owned arrogance, Loki simply lowers his head in grave acknowledgement and then sings in a soft baritone, _"I'm a man that will go far. Find the moon and reach for the stars with my sword and head held high."_

That movie had tried and failed to convey the weight that comes with immortality, but the music was great, Loki's voice is more than passable, and _Highlander_ is definitely a common guilty pleasure amongst them. The series, too, though only Thor and Bruce will watch _Highlander II: The Quickening_ again, and none of them acknowledge the existence of any of the further movies.

"So, if I don't have to fight you, or fight at all, what do I do? What _can_ I do?" Wanda asks after the laughter has died down. She is back to taking the occasional bite of her food, though she's not tucking in as enthusiastically as Pietro is.

"Anything that you want," Steve offers, earnest and enthusiastic both. "Certainly if you want to finish up your current studies, we can find a university to enroll you in, one that will let you test out of the classes you already completed since you can't claim any credit for already taking them. You, too, Pietro. Or if you want to take jobs, Tony has business in many countries and can no doubt find a place for you doing just about whatever you might want."

"Who is Tony?" Pietro asks. "His name, or hers, has been mentioned, but they are not here? They are not coming?"

Steve's expression turns fond, while Sam's and Bruce's turn amused. "Tony isn't an immortal, but he's one of us," Steve explains. "Like Bruce, he's support and science, and it's thanks to him that we can keep our existence a secret in today's world. Tony is Tony Stark, heir and now Chief Engineer and majority owner of Stark Industries."

The twins don't seem near as enthused when finding out that someone outside of this circle knows about their immortality, although maybe it's just Tony Stark they're not happy about. Certainly Tony's reputation, both his business one and his personal predilections, has earned him critics throughout the world, especially when SI's main focus was weapons research and production.

"It's not like you're going to need to get jobs," Sam tries, also sensing a cooling in their response to hearing about Tony. "If there are places you've always wanted to visit, for instance, one of us has likely been there and will happily act as a guide," he mentions. "Or if there is someplace you want to settle for a while, and just do nothing, we can help with that too."

That gets Steve nodding and admitting, "I died toward the end of World War II, so the last thing I wanted to do was go right back into the fight. So Sam took me to this place in Africa for a few months. Somehow, the people have kept their riches and advancements hidden from the rest of the world. What they show to outsiders is a simple, village life when instead, they live in El Dorado – or Tír na nÓg if you're more familiar with tales of Faerie. Wakanda definitely feels like stepping into a magical realm."

"So we can go anywhere but home," Pietro says with more than a touch of acrimony.

"Home was not so grand a place to be," Wanda chides him although some of her conviction is undoubtedly a front. 

Shithole though it seemed to be to Natasha's eyes, Sokovia _had_ been the twin's whole life. It was what they knew, and now unthinkable circumstances were forcing them to abandon all of that and start their lives over. Wakanda might be the best place for them over the next few months; a quiet place to research the greater world that they never thought they'd have an opportunity to be part of. They could even decide to stay there throughout Pietro's life, since it will mostly likely be an eye blink in the span of Wanda's. Natasha doesn't really see that as something Wanda will be content with for too long, but she's also certain that whatever gets decided will be done by the _two_ them. Just as should Wanda choose to work with them during Pietro's lifespan, they will have to tailor their plans to include someone who isn't immortal.

"Hey, nothing has to be decided at all right now," Clint reminds them, voice and expression open and reassuring. "Come up with more questions, do some googling to explore your options, you've got time and the opportunity to do almost anything, including changing your mind even after you do pick something. But do you have any more questions for tonight, though, things that are going to keep you awake?"

"Just one, I guess, although I am more curious than worried," Pietro says. "You said that you _found_ Wanda. That you came to Sokovia specifically _to_ find her. How did you know?"

"Sorry, I guess we haven't really explained that yet, have we?" Clint apologizes, his expression turning sheepish. "Yeah, well, we all experienced Wanda's first death while it happened. Turns out there is a connection that gets made between existing immortals and a new one. We experience the new immortal's death and, until we meet up, the new immortal will randomly relive some of our past deaths, mostly through dreams. That's part of the reason we didn't want to wait in bringing you here to meet all of us. Not even Bruce has an idea of how or why it happens, but I guess there needs to be some way for us to find each other." He looks to Bruce, to see if he wants to take over, but Bruce shakes his head and gestures that Clint is doing fine.

Clint doesn't look like he feels he's doing fine, but as the twins are hanging onto his every word, he keeps going. "We don't know why the connection breaks when we meet, either. In the early days, seeking out a new immortal could take years, and sometimes we never did find each other. The dreams drove a couple of the lost immortals crazy. Living with them killing themselves over and over in an attempt to escape from what they thought were voices and demons in their head, wasn't a picnic on our part either," Clint adds with a pained smile. "You'll be spared all of that, Wanda, at least until another new immortal has their first death. That's normally been every four or five hundred years, well, up until you came along."

Wanda very carefully sets her napkin down. Her rapt expression turns blank, covering shock or repulsion, maybe both. They've more or less briefed her on the physical and inevitably emotional pitfalls that will come from outliving almost everyone who comes to matter to her, but those are nebulous things – a future that their very presence shows she will be able to overcome. Plus the novelty and giddiness of all the positive aspects of her new found immortality have currently held her attention. Even the horrors of how her final death might come no doubt seems far away and even something that might never happen given how humanity and technology continues to advance. But this, their connection and the madness that will happen when something goes wrong or is even just delayed for too long, seems to have taken Wanda to the point where it has become too much to handle.

Still, she is a polite child. Offering, "Thank you all, for the answers and the dinner," although she hasn't eaten even half of what she'd intended. "I think I should like to retire for the evening," she continues, sliding back her chair, face pale enough to rival Pietro's hair and unwilling to meet anyone's eye. Not even her brother's. "Pietro," she still calls out to him, "if you wish to stay up do not worry about waking me when you do come in."

"I have no more questions for now, either," he states, even though it's obvious that he's lying.

Natasha appreciates that he is much more careful with his sister's feelings than with people that he's just met; that Wanda has someone when the rest of them are so obviously not who Wanda wants to be around right now.

"If you will excuse the both of us," Pietro says, also rising from the table. "We will assist with either breakfast or the clean up tomorrow, if that is acceptable."

"Of course," Sam tells them, his eyes sad although he doesn't let any pity or judgement show in his expression or tone. "Remember that my door is open if you need anything. Don't worry about waking me. Or waking any of us. We've all been through this and know how disconcerting it is. Even if you don't want to talk, company can still be comforting."

Pietro nods and takes Wanda's arm to escort her from the room, the two of them walking so closely and so in synch that they look like lovers – or twins, Natasha supposes, since these two are the first she's really spent any time around. In them, she can see how the tales of twins sharing their own kind of supernatural connection started.

"We really should work out some kind of handbook or something, to hand out to the next immortal," Bruce suggests. "I can't believe we are still so bad at this."

Natasha shrugs. "Each of you has reacted differently. Been laid low by different parts of our existence. None of you really ever took in all of it in one go, like we were able to do with Wanda, since she's been so accepting of the big concepts. Maybe breaking it up does make it easier to digest and accept the next part once you've come to terms with the first."

"I'm more concerned that what we're seeing as acceptance is just an elaborate sense of denial," Sam admits, now letting his troubled expression free reign. "That she's only telling us what she thinks we want to hear."

Clint shakes his head. "Some of it, maybe, but Wanda understands that by dying she can't return to the life that she had. I think what is really getting to her is all the choices we keep throwing at her. I don't think she's had to consider so many possibilities before. We've got to remember that only Yelena was as young as Wanda when she revived. That the rest of us had lived a pretty full life before we died our first deaths, even if those lives sucked. The difference between Yelena and Wanda is that Yelena also had an abundance of ambition despite being young and mortal. So she saw her immortality as a right as well as vindication that her desires shouldn't be denied, whereas Wanda has already learned to curtail any desires."

He glances Natasha's way as he speaks of Yelana, looking apologetic though he shouldn't, since he is speaking the truth. Yelena had been ambitious, impatient too, when she thought Natasha had purposely been holding her back. Gao, in turn, had cultivated Yelena's impatience as well as her ambitions, encouraged her to want more than she had the wisdom or experience to handle.

"So we stop offering Wanda the world," Natasha suggests. "We don’t take away her choices or agency, of course, but maybe we can break the options down into more easily digested bites since we didn't do that with the rest of it. Ask her what she might want to do tomorrow instead expecting her to decide what she wants for the next few months or the rest of her life. Let her set her own horizons and define her own limits."

That gets a round of nods, not that it is really anything profound, or necessarily even workable, given how they've already filled Wanda's head with too any possibilities. The best thing they can do is to be there when Wanda stumbles, with a hand or a suggestion, and without any judgement or expectations.

"I imagine sleep’s not going to come all that easy for any of us tonight," Sam says, the next to rise from the table. "What I said for the twins goes to all of you, too, you know. If anyone needs to talk, I'll listen."

"What _I_ need is to refresh my drink," Loki states, getting up himself. "May I pour for anyone else?"

A round of nos, then they are all rising, with Steve gathering up discarded plates with Sam, while Clint and Bruce reach for the leftover food to refrigerate.

Natasha starts collecting glasses, Thor moving to help her. 

"They seem an interesting pair, although very, very young," he remarks.

"They had never left Novi Grad before today," Natasha admits. "I feel like I have stolen them away instead of offering them aid."

"You shouldn't beat yourself up," Bruce tells her from the other side of the table. "Her life was over when the bullet killed her. You're giving her a chance to find a new future. You're just not used to the transition going so smoothly, so your brain is making up its own conflict. Plus you're letting yourself wallow in your past. In your guilt. Wanda isn't going to be another Yelena, Natasha, not that you failed her, Alexis, or Lü Zhi Gao either. It's time you start trusting yourself again."

His words attracting more sympathy than she is comfortable with, Natasha turns them back on Bruce without thinking. "I should say pot meet kettle, _Bol'shoy Paren',_ but then you have always been better at handing out advice than taking it." She reigns herself in, though, offering a smile not just to take the sting out of her words, but also to show that she appreciates his words even if she doesn't believe them.

"I am fine," she tells them all. "Yes, I've let memories overwhelm me today. I'm sure we all have. It's just that I have so many more than the rest of you. Sometimes they wear me out."

"It has been a long time since you have taken a break to be only Natasha and let go of the mission for a while," Sam comments, looking like he wants to say more.

"And when I need to take that kind of time, I will," she says quickly to forestall that. "I may bitch about feeling responsible for the world – "

"And all of us," Loki says, not unkindly.

"But I don't know what I’d do without having something to focus on," she admits.

"You need a hobby," Steve remarks from the opening to the kitchen.

Natasha snorts. "I have thousands."

"That you mostly ignore," he counters with a grin, coming to stand by her side and take the next set of glasses out of her hands. "Outside of kicking ass when it's necessary, of course. When is the last time you took a vacation? Not just a day or two off, but a week or month, to someplace that had nothing to do with what we do?"

"Sitting on a beach is boring and I come home with nothing to show for it, since we can't hold a tan," she retorts, giving up the battle over helping any more with the cleanup, although she does decide to rescue her glass back from Steve and reaches over to take the bottle that Loki had traded his own glass for. She pours, not really caring what kind of alcohol is in it, since like tanning, any buzz from alcohol is also fleeting, and then hands it back. 

"I've swum the Great Barrier Reef before it was a thing, climbed Mount Everest – twice," She points out. "I've gone on numerous safaris, stood on top of Machu Picchu _and_ the Great Wall of China, and spent a summer helping trace penguin habitats in the Antarctic, not to mention saw the pyramids being built, experienced the American Revolution as a participant, along with countless other wars, and managed to get access to Cape Canaveral and Baikonur Cosmodrome several times. So what's your idea to top any of that?" she asks and knocks back her glass like it was only a shot and not a full wine glass.

Bruce offers, "You could break the bank at Monte Carlo – "

"We did that back in 1917, and in '53," Clint says with a particular smile that Natasha echoes.

Both had been fun, in different ways. As had playing craps and beating Bugsy Siegel in a million dollar hand of poker – on a bluff. Or successfully robbing the Tropicana, when she got pissed off at how some of the showgirls from the Folies Bergere were being treated by their bosses.

  
"Just because you've done everything once, doesn’t mean certain things aren't fun to do again," comes from Thor as he also comes out of the kitchen with a beer and a bag of cheese puffs, of all things. "If you chose one place in the world to live, where would you pick?"

"My bed," Natasha answers, letting her smile grow into a grin. "But I still can't stay in it more than eight hours at a time."

"No, seriously, Natasha. There has to be some place that brings you peace," Sam entreats.

"Seriously, as long as I'm with one of you guys, I really don't care where I am or what I'm doing. What I don't like is being alone or having nothing to do."

"So let's all take some time off and take Wanda and Pietro to Wakanda," Sam suggests, his face growing animated and making him look years younger than the thoughtful, empathetic aspect he tends to wear. "Those who want to relax and recharge can find peace there, and I'm sure that Shuri has something cooking up in her lab that needs a helper or a volunteer for the nerds," he says with a pointed look at Bruce. "Steve and I can continue to wear down and win over the Dora Milaje so they'll let us and Thor spar with them, while Clint can finally get his ride on one of the war rhinos. Natasha, you can spend time with Okoye, the two of you coming up with new moves to keep King T'Challa humble."

"Maybe," Natasha concedes, "Although I don't see why Clint is the only one who gets to ride a war rhino. If Wanda agrees to the suggestion, and assuming T'Challa allows us entry, it might be the thing to do after Clint and I finish up in Bosnia. But T'Challa might not want nine outsiders on his doorstep all at once."

"As long as we're asking as friends of Wakanda, and not just treating them as a resource, I doubt T'Challa is going to say no," Sam offers up. "But I'll reach out to him later this morning – make that this evening, actually," he corrects himself with a bemused look at his watch. "Hell, it's nearly three. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's been a long, stressful day. I'm heading to my mattress."

It takes only a few moments for everyone to finish up with what they've been doing and begin exchanging their good-nights. When she and Clint move into the bedroom Wanda had agreed they should share (and hadn't thrown their suitcases out of to show she or Pietro had changed their minds), they find that one of the twins left the inner bathroom's light on, giving them plenty of visibility to be able to maneuver in silence. Enough light to also see that extra blankets and several of the pillows from the bed were now laid out on the two chaise lounges.

Natasha grabs up her bag and moves into the bathroom, but once her preparations are done and Clint takes his turn to change and ready himself for sleep, she eyes the smallest of several terraces attached to the suite and instead takes one of the blankets and heads outside, signing to Clint that she doesn’t need his company, although she's not going to say no if wants to join her. She's tired, certainly, as her and Clint's day started well before those who'd been in the States the night before, but her ghosts are still too fresh to want to close her eyes and let them forth. Quiet appreciation of the beauty and splendor of historic Vienna should offer its own healing and a different form of rest.

*****

Screams are the last thing Natasha expects to awaken her. Finding that she did fall asleep out on the terrace, under Clint's blanket as well as her own, slows her down, but only for a moment. She charges into the room to find Wanda clutched in Pietro's embrace, with Clint standing by one of the table lights he must have just turned on after throwing his shirt over it so it isn't startlingly bright. Steve is the first through the other door, Sam just a step behind him. Natasha hears Thor quietly asking something from the outer room, and Loki's concern whether they'll soon have security coming to their door is crystal clear. Bruce doesn't close the bedroom door as he also comes through, but he doesn't move away from how he's blocking Thor and Loki from entering as well.

Not that it is likely that Wanda notices how crowded the room had already gotten. Or Pietro, as he's trying to calm her. Natasha can make out snippets of whispered Sokovian; mostly "it's okay" and "you're okay" from Pietro, while Wanda is crying out something about her arm and that she's … cold?

Since she's got two blankets in her hand, Natasha moves forward and wraps one of them around Wanda's shoulders. Wanda doesn't notice that either. She's weeping and shaking, clutching at her arm and looking like she's surprised she is touching it. Natasha isn't even sure that she knows that Pietro is holding her. Neither had Natasha considered that Wanda might be so susceptible to suggestion and nightmares from the earlier discussions, given how resilient she'd been so far. She exchanges a guilty look with Clint, who looks as distressed and helpless as Pietro does.

"Not _Soldat!_ " Wanda abruptly starts repeating over and over to herself in Russian, now rocking within Pietro's arms and clutching at the hair on the top of her head.

Damn. This looks more like a psychotic break than a nightmare. Perhaps a form of PTSD that could have been triggered by dying? Of course, what it _really_ looks like is when one of them in the throes of another immortal's death, but that can't be it. None of them are similarly affected, and while the pattern broke with Wanda happening so quickly after Steve, Natasha can't accept that there could be two activations with 24 hours of one another –

" _Ne_ _Soldat!"_ Wanda now screams, before spilling more words in Russian, indistinct until Natasha makes out the name _"_ Rumlow" and then " _ub'yu tebya_!"

"Did she say Rumlow?" Steve asks, his voice quiet but very intense as he comes to stand by Natasha and Clint at the foot of the bed.

Clint nods. "And kill you at the end, _Soldat_ – soldier – before," since Russian is a language Steve still hasn’t gotten far in learning _._

 _"_ As in Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, and his partner, the Winter Soldier, right?" Clint continues, his voice husky and a little wild. "That's what we're all thinking. But what. The. Fuck? How does a college student from Sokovia know about two notorious assassins?" He looks like he wants to pace or rail about physically, but he also clearly doesn't want to move away from Wanda, even if there isn't anything he can do to help her.

Yeah, that bonding hasn't just developed one way.

Natasha is more concerned with his question, though, until she realizes that the wrong answer to it would definitely affect his quick trust of the twins. She's not one for borrowing trouble, especially not when it is already too late, so instead she reflects on the part of it all that she can work with.

Assassinations and contract killings at least of heads of state and other important figures is part of their purview in her mind, yet _they_ don't know all that much about Crossbones and the Winter Solder. Those codenames, of course, just like anyone who is remotely connected to government and private security forces, since reputations are everything in that business. A business she'd certainly never considered Pietro and Wanda to be involved in, although given how little information Tony had been able to uncover about them, she should have been suspicious.

But even now, even with what they are witnessing, Natasha still doesn't believe that Wanda is playing her. Her death had certainly been real – felt real. Nor was that death and their searching her out be something that could be induced without someone being able to identify – in advance – a new immortal. Otherwise, this hypothetical someone would instead have had to have very detailed information about each of them – not just having identified them but knew their locations real time. Plus that someone would have to have a way to get into their heads to plant false images. Only psychics _aren't_ real, and even their own brush with whatever it is that connects them is only temporary and has _always_ gone away after meeting –

"Wanda?" Steve calls out, wariness now shading the sympathy and concern her screams had engendered. Understandable, since Steve had been the one who'd discovered Brock Rumlow was Crossbones, before being killed by a sniper when Steve had stopped Crossbones from assassinating Von Doom back in 2013.

Of course, Wanda and Pietro would have been no older than fifteen or sixteen back then, unlikely accomplices for contract killers, nor did they look anything like Rumlow to somehow be family. Not that Natasha hasn't run across child killers before, those willing as well as those who'd been coerced or raised not to know any better. But again, getting fooled aside, there is just no way the rest of it could be arranged. Not even _they_ could have created such an elaborate trap and, frankly, if between a bunch of people who didn't let death get in their way, and Tony Stark, couldn't manage it, no mere mortal could.

Not that what appears to be happening now with Wanda makes sense either –

"You said the connections get broken when we meet," Wanda cries out accusingly when she lifts her head in response to Steve calling her name, voice hoarse from her tears and her screaming. But she's speaking English, so she's back with them now, and no longer in the throes of her nightmare.

"Some nightmares feel very real, and it would make sense after tonight's – "

"I know nightmares," Wanda interrupts Sam, her gaze and voice dripping scorn. "We were ten years old, having dinner, the four of us. When the first shell hits, two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It's big. Our parents fall and the whole building starts coming apart. The second shell hits. But, it doesn't go off. It just...sits there in the rubble, three feet from Pietro's and my face. The Stark Industries logo mocking us when we'd been told Stark technology would save us all. We were trapped like that for two days, knowing every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, will set it off. In Sokovia bad things happen every day, _Sam,_ and no one helps. The world doesn't care. Why would I have nightmares about things that happen to other people, people that I don't know, when I already have so many of my own?"

Clint's breath catches, and it looks like he's going to break and go toward the twins, but he stops himself before Natasha has to.

Pietro is looking belligerently at them too. Natasha has little doubt that that is how they survived being on their own when they were children. They had each other and could hate and turn on the whole world, vowing to never giving someone an opportunity to further hurt or take advantage of them again.

Natasha feels sorrow over all of that having happened to them, but she doesn't feel guilty. Or even blame Tony, as it appears that they do, Weapons are made to be used, but after Tony learned of how some of his products were being misused, he shut down the whole program, and nearly lost his company and his life when others objected. All any of them can offer is aid and example, yet only to people who are willing to work to change their lives. Human suffering is both symptom and cause of war and strife, and no matter how many times she tries, or how many years of her life that she offers, Natasha will never be able to bring about a meaningful peace. To do enough. So she just does what she can, mostly on an individual level, and allows herself to find satisfaction in that.

"Even with having a twin," Wanda continues her verbal attack, "I have never dreamt of being him, of being male, and I have never felt myself die before today – "

"Wanda." This time Clint is the one who calls to her, but in a voice so wrecked and hollowed out that it stops her tirade. "What … who were you experiencing?" 

He's turned bone white, but as Natasha finally follows his thinking, she knows she looks – feels – no better. There really can only be one explanation. No matter how impossible it _should_ be, it is the only thing that actual makes sense without bringing in literal psychic or magical abilities.

"'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth'," Bruce quotes Doyle to himself, shaking his head.

Hearing him, as well as seeing the growing expressions of horror on everyone else's faces, Wanda's own expression loses its harshness and turns searching and even concerned, as her natural empathy breaks through her anger and distrust. "What are you saying?”

Bruce and Sam exchange a look, before Bruce sends another Natasha's way. There is hope there, but also apprehension, and he gives a subtle nod in Clint's direction. Even though she'd been thinking it herself, that she had only _allowed_ herself to think it because Clint voiced it first, to now have Bruce, who has a genius to rival Tony's, agreeing with her makes it feel convincingly real. She moves to Clint and draws him to her and then the both of them down to sit on the closest chaise.

"Wanda, sorry," Bruce begins. "But who were you in your dream," he asks point blank, no easing up to the question.

Wanda frowns, the only one along with her brother, who doesn't understand the enormity of what she's uncovered although it's obvious by her now tempered manner that she knows it is something of import. And of significant distress. "I do not know," she responds. "There is just so much confusion, so much pain. He welcomes the oblivion of death each time it comes."

Clint makes a strangled sound, and grips Natasha's hand hard enough to break bones, but that pain is welcome compared to the hurt building in her heart.

"You said _Soldat._ Kept saying' _ne Soldat'._ Not Soldier," Sam translates when she looks confused. "Ub'yu tebya," he then adds, but she shows no recognition of the words. "Do you speak Russian?"

She shakes her head, but seems to think nothing of it, although it's just one more point to the impossible for the rest of them.

"He was denying the name he was being called, not to them, but to himself," she tells them slowly, turning her head and closing her eyes for a moment in a likely attempt to enhance her recall. "There was a man there while he died that he hated. Promised to kill him. He made it an oath, and held it bright in his mind as if he feared, like his denying of being Soldat, that he would forget his oaths after he revived. Who is he? Is he one of the lost? You spoke as if none of them lived anymore, that the only immortals alive right now are here in the room. What is happening?" she asks them, still clutching at Pietro, who hasn't let go of her either.

"It's Bucky," Clint chokes out. "It has to be. But how? And why hasn't he come back to us? He must think we abandoned him, that I– "

"Clint, don't do that to yourself. If it truly _is_ Bucky he knows … he would never think … " But Natasha can't continue, because the truth of it is that Bucky _has_ stayed hidden for seventy-five years, and he would never do that to any of them, much less to Clint, were he in his right mind.

"If it is your Bucky, he doesn’t remember that," Wanda says quickly, as if she, too, is trying to spare Clint now. "No memories of you, not even of his own name. He knows he's immortal and that he dies and should revive, because as I died with him, I felt his hope that this time would be the last. That he wouldn't wake up again. "

"How did he die?" Loki asks, his chin raised in defiance and anticipation of being jumped on for the question, but it's a valid one and could lend them a clue as to how to find Bucky.

Wanda pales. "He remembers it always being the same. They take his arm. Cut if off at the shoulder so he won't fight them, and then let him bleed out in agony. That he remembers, along with always being cold when he comes back, like he's kept in a frozen state of death until they need him. He wakes up while his arm is still regenerating, but time has passed from when they killed him. Time like years. Fashion, music, it's all different when he goes out, as are the faces around him. Rumlow has been there the last few times, both as he dies and when he wakes up. He enjoys being the one who wields the machete, but he is also Soldat's friend. His only friend."

"Bruce?" Thor asks from his place at the door, anger growing in his voice as well as his expression, though it vies with confusion. "I can understand a growing madness if this is all true, but why has he not healed and regained his memories? It is a given that someone knows what Bucky is, and have taken pains to control him – to use him if he is indeed the Winter Soldier – but we heal from all injury, disease, and damage. If he is lucid enough to kill for them, why does he not turn on them and come home? "

Bruce has begun to pace, agitation clearly overtaking him, but with Thor's questions, he stops and takes a deep breath, and then another one while he puts his thoughts to the problem instead of letting his emotions overwhelm him. "Any of us can be convinced of things," he reminds them. "Manipulated and conditioned. Gao was an expert at it, and she proved that we are not immune with her treatment of Yelena. Keeping Bucky from his memories is tricky, but not all that hard. Even _our_ brains retreat under extreme pain. If he's being tortured continually – "

Clint again makes a pained noise. Natasha realizes that the hand she is holding is growing cold, like he's turning shocky. She reaches out with her free hand for the blanket she'd dropped on the chaise, but then sees that she's not going to be able to get it around him without letting go of him, something she's loathed to do even for her own comfort. Before she has to, though, the blanket is taken from her and set around both of their shoulders from behind, Loki then stepping back immediately before Clint can recognize that's who the help came from.

Probably a prudent move, as she honestly has no idea how Clint would react to Loki in this moment, were he aware of anything other than his anguish.

"Pain will eventually break down the strongest of barriers, but it can be the cessation of it that can cause the most damage," Bruce continues, keeping everything clinical and detached, not that they aren't all looking queasy and disturbed. "If I needed to keep one of us under control, well, I use another of us or even a civilian as a hostage, but pain and reward also works." He stops and looks around, meets the stricken faces with his own troubled and apologetic expression.

"Conversely, if I was being held and someone wanted to know my secrets, I'd give up my greater sense of self if I could," he further states. "I'd retract my awareness down into the smallest part of my core and let go of everything else. I can't give away what I don't know – what I can't remember." He stops to take a deep breath, and when no one else says something, Bruce goes on.

"We have to think that whoever has Bucky, has had him from the very beginning. Well, that there has been some continuous chain of involvement," he amends, which gets a few heads nodding.

Seventy-five years is too long for it to have been all of the same people from the beginning, but a secret organization – a cabal – could have the wherewithal to keep such a secret, as well as the impetus to keep it going.

"Experimentation likely came first," Bruce adds cautiously, his eyes returning to Clint. But Clint's head is down although Natasha doubts he actually sees the curled fingers he's holding in his lap even if that's where he's aimed his gaze.

"Learning his limits and whether his healing if not the full immortality could be transferred to someone else. Once they discovered that answer was a resounding no, I guess they'd turned to determining what other use they had for him," Bruce proposes. "Assassin makes sense. They've got someone they can send out who has the skills and tactics of the great warriors throughout history and no conscience thoughts getting in the way of using those skills. Nor do they need to worry about him getting killed during the job; it's probably better for them if he does, as they don't need to worry about law enforcement getting their hands on him. They don't so much have a super soldier, but the perfect weapon."

 _"Well-reasoned, if terrible things to have to say_ ," Tony's voice suddenly comes through the speakers on the laptop that Steve at some point that Natasha missed, left to gather and bring back into the bedroom. _"Even if the science or history is off, it's still a framework to work off of so that we can find and retrieve your Lost Boy_."

"Wanda, Pietro," this is Tony Stark," Steve says amidst the pregnant pause that follows, gesturing toward the screen. "Despite what you may think of him, we couldn't do half of the work that we do without him. He holds our secret and our trust."

Their trust isn't going to be given overnight just on someone else's say so, but Wanda nods and offers no objection, with Pietro following her lead despite the scowl he aims at the computer screen.

 _"To figure out who has Barnes, we've got to go back to when you thought you lost him for good_ ," Tony starts up again, his wave possibly an acknowledgement of Steve's introductions or just simply calling attention back to himself. " _I've got Dad's reports somewhere, but, well, Barnes was always an abstract to me. Living immortals were definitely more interesting. So spill. What happened? Who was there, who saw what and, more importantly, how did an outsider figure out what Barnes was without knowing about any of the rest of you_?"

Tactless even when Tony is being sincere, Natasha isn't surprised that Clint suddenly lets go of her hand and gets up to leave the room. She is bemused when Wanda and Pietro both follow, but then the twins would have only a peripheral interest in Bucky's past themselves. Since they look as if their intent is to distract and comfort Clint, Natasha elects to stay and only feels a little like she's abandoning him. When she notices that before first going to bed, the twins had apparently raided Clint's suitcase and grabbed up two of his Disney character t-shirts to sleep in, while Wanda had also helped herself to a pair of his boxers, she's feeling better that Clint will be in good hands. Still, when Sam shoots a questioning look her direction, she nods in gratitude and watches him head out after the trio.

"I guess that is my cue," Loki volunteers, once more stepping up when he could have let others take the lead – or held out until Natasha prodded him just to be contrary. Seventy-five years of exile does seem to have given him a greater appreciation for cooperation, at least until the novelty of being welcomed back into the family wears off.

 _"Don't want to stop you, here,"_ Tony interrupts, _"but a couple things to get out of the way before we really get into the down and dirty. First, no one has to worry about what gets said. Pep's gone off to bed, and JARVIS will let me know if she comes looking for me, though it's really not that late here, so she knows I'm good for a couple of more hours before she should expect me to join her. Secondly, I'd really appreciate for Thor and Loki to move into camera range for a quick pic, since we've never met. I've got up a couple of avatars on my screens in front of me, but while the cartoon images of Hagar and Hamlet were fine when you were just names and line items on a budget, I like to know who is talking to me. Big fan, by the way, of your work getting Gorbachev into power, and the later failure of the August Putsch."_

Although they both look confused, Thor and Loki quickly stick their face in front of the laptop where Steve had set it on the dresser, getting a thumbs up from Tony's image on the screen, before Loki returns to lean on one of the walls and resumes his debrief.

"We were all in Europe by that point, working on the side of the Allies, although the Germans thought Thor was working for them, and the Russians believed Natasha was spying for them," Loki offers up. "The rest of us were part of the Resistance. Bucky was working directly with an American commando group at the behest of your father, actually," he gestures to Tony's image, though Natasha doubts he's within camera range any longer.

"He had befriended its Captain who, at the time, had simply been a very young and earnest soldier who'd gained his position and respect of the men under him by attacking one of the SS's weapons labs and incidentally recovering a number of prisoners of war. How many men was that again, Captain America?" Loki asks as he turns a too innocent gaze Steve's direction.

"One hundred and sixty-three," Steve bites out in response to the hated nickname he'd been burdened with by the press during the war.

It takes Natasha a moment to twig onto the reason for Loki's obvious mockery but, yeah, Loki and Steve's only interaction had come in that short span of time leading up to and then the few days between Steve proving to also be immortal, and Loki's exile. Steve had been terribly young back then, although three years of the horrible war had knocked out any naivety, and Steve had never set out to become the hero the Generals made of him for propaganda purposes back home.

"Success bred arrogance, at least on the part of the Allied Command," Loki continues, as if unaware of Steve's bristling, though it's really that he's unconcerned by ruffling some feathers. "The more that the _Howling Commandos_ advanced and thwarted the Germans, the larger the targets became. Eventually the Allied Generals set their sights on a grand prize," he adds with a magician's flourish over an imaginary box. "They ordered Captain America to lead his merry band to start hitting the trains taking Nazi prisoners to the Death Camps like Kreischberg."

" _Only at some point during a scouting mission with Barnes, Steve got bit by something and died from anaphylactic shock before dear old Dad and Aunt Peggy could administer any epinephrine,_ " Tony offers, knowing that part of the story since it was how Howard and Peggy – and Steve, too – had found out about Steve’s immortality.

As it had come through to Natasha, Steve came back to life just after Howard had called in the report to Colonel Phillips, but had then died again from biphasic anaphylaxis. By the time he revived again and this time stayed alive, word of his passing had spread too far for it to get covered up and let Steve go back as if nothing had happened.

_"So, given what seems to happen with you guys when a new immortal comes on line, I guess Steve interrupted whatever you had going on in your part of the war effort?"_

"Loki was Thor's backup in Germany, while Clint was working with Bucky, and Sam kept an eye on me in Russia," Natasha answers Tony. "Bruce was back in Bletchley Park, working with Turing and his codebreakers. Steve's actual death didn't cause too much disruption, but having to leave to find him certainly did. Sam and I had some trouble extracting ourselves, and got there last."

"We all have our guilt over what happened next, although mine is the least forgivable, especially now if young Wanda really has made a connection with Bucky," Loki takes back the narrative, and contrition replaces the sarcasm he's been sporting. "We had two pressing problems. Allied Command was not willing to scrub the next mission despite losing its commander, and Steve did not want to sit out the mission despite his men thinking him dead. It took Bruce and Thor both to physically keep Steve where Howard had hidden him away until Natasha and Sam arrived, and then Peggy to convince Steve that he had to remain behind once the op got underway."

Even if Steve had taken part, Natasha is convinced it still would have failed and resulted in casualties; not even ten, not _twenty_ additional men could have taken on the fifty _Waffen-SS_ who'd been there waiting for the raid. If it hadn't been Bucky who'd fallen, it would still have been someone else. Maybe one or more of the very mortal – and all so very young – Commandos who had volunteered not only to join their various country's armies at the start of the War, but, after being prisoners of war who'd won a ticket home when they'd been liberated, had instead further volunteered to be part of a front-line reconnaissance and raiding unit who constantly sought out the most dangerous of missions. Bucky had counted the men of the Howling Commandos as his friends, and while his loss had left holes in too many hearts, Natasha at least, had been able to find some small solace in knowing Bucky would have preferred to come to his own final death if it prevented someone else's.

"We hoped a few more volunteers might fill the vacancy Steve's death had left in the Commandos' plan."

Loki begins to pace as he continues to speak, while Bruce takes a seat next to Natasha. Steve and Thor remain standing, Thor watching Loki closely. It is from his anxious appearance that Natasha realizes that Loki isn't just spouting his words and regrets, or showing penitence in his expression because it is expected of him, but because he genuinely feels remorse.

"I had already left to join Clint in offering backup to Bucky and the Commandos," Loki relates, his words now speeding up along with his steps. "We were waiting on the rest of us, only the Generals ordered the Commandos to go early. Bucky wasn't about to let the mission be _two_ men down and Clint, of course, wouldn't let Bucky take on such a stupid and dangerous undertaking without his help. With little choice, I left Natasha a message detailing the plan with the inestimable Peggy Carter, before following after our two hot-headed warriors."

Loki stops for a moment, taking a deep heaving breath as if he'd been running instead of just pacing, though he quickly gets himself back under control as if he only now realizes that the computer screen is not his only audience. "I arrived in the midst of total chaos. The Nazis had gotten wind of the Allied plan and had set an ambush. Clint was already dead, Bucky wounded, and the SS troops setting up to pursue the Commandos who, remarkably, given the circumstances, had still managed to free one boxcar of prisoners and steal a truck before beginning a strategic withdrawal to save those that they could. When Bucky told me to retrieve Clint and get him away before anyone witnessed his revival, I didn't even consider switching places with Bucky, even though I was uninjured and could certainly have managed to hold out until Natasha arrived with additional reinforcements."

 _"Harsh and selfish, but your actions then don't really figure into what this is now, it sounds like,"_ Tony breaks in while they all now try to recover their breathing and control. _"Other than not leading the charge to get Bucky out of the hands of the SS before they killed him,"_ he amends off-handedly, like he's already five thoughts beyond his slight condemnation and now trying to fit the account into whatever theory he's come up with to see if it fits.

"We did go after our valiant companion," Thor corrects Tony. "Loki properly cautioned doing so before we could all gather and make a concerted effort, but we departed the next morning. Only to arrive too late and learn of the record of his death, conducted within scant hours of his position getting overrun."

 _"And thus, Clint's ongoing animosity to Loki, no doubt for that even more than over the not volunteering to die instead,"_ Tony concludes but not reacting like it matters. _"None of you thought that strange? That the Germans bothered to take him to Kreischberg when they could have just shot him a few more times and left him there on the side of the road?"_

"The train was already on its way to Kreischberg. Bucky was simply one more undesirable thrown in with the rest," Bruce responds, getting back to his feet. "But obviously, you think it was more than that."

On the screen, Tony shrugs. _"I do have the benefit of looking at it from the idea that Bucky is still alive,"_ he concedes. _"So let's go back to the security breach. Who told the Germans about the upcoming raid?"_

"We were never able to determine that," Steve admits. "Peggy was Colonel Phillips' spymaster, but she never found any evidence that anyone betrayed the Commandos. While Buck and Clint weren't the only members of the Resistance we were working with, they were the only ones privy to the plan from the start. The two other Resistance that took part in that raid, Dino Manelli and Jacques Dernier, continued on as official members of the Commandos through until VE-Day, as loyal as any of the military guys who'd taken oaths. In the end, Peggy and Colonel Phillips just figured that the Germans had gotten tired of getting hit by the Commandos, and that they started beefing up all the likely targets."

" _An extra ten men or so, sure, but an extra twenty. Twenty-five? They didn't have that many troops to spare,_ " Tony points out with a shake of his head. " _Again, though, I have the advantage of distance and detachment. You all were reeling from your loss, as well as dealing with a ready-made, but reluctant replacement. That must have thrown Dad off his game, and I imagine that afterward, you just all chose to let it go, since you didn't have a specific target to exercise your wraith upon. You probably had also lost confidence in Phillips or at least the rest of Allied Command. And then there was the whole_ 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds' _brave new Atomic age to deal with when Dad retreated back to the States. My thinking is that he got caught up with Oppenheimer's mad scientist project once he realized he couldn't make the immortality thing work for him, preferring to leave your secret lives mostly to Peggy and Jarvis._ "

"Your dad wasn't after immortality for himself," Bruce objects.

He'd become Howard's partner in science after the War, much like he now worked with Tony. And while the two had never been as close of friends as Steve and Howard had been, or as Tony and Bruce are now, Natasha knows there had still been plenty of respect between them.

 _"Agree to disagree,"_ comes from Tony. _"But I will say that he wasn't going after it for totally selfish reasons. He genuinely thought the world was better off with him in it, that he had more to offer than a son who would never fill his footsteps. Again, though, off topic. Let's go with the premise that someone told the Germans about the raid. If it wasn't a Commando, a member of the Resistance, or anyone in Phillip's SSR, then it had to come from Allied Command. Or it had been inadvertent. Just bad luck, maybe a witness to something that who was smart enough to extrapolate and put together some pieces that happened to spell out that particular train to Kreischberg. We will set that aside for a moment, though feel free to come up with mental lists of possible suspects. First, though, how did someone find out about Barnes' immortality?"_

"Healing from several bullet wounds during the train ride to Kreischberg?" Loki offers up, his sarcasm back in full force.

It's funny, but Natasha almost thinks that Loki is pissed off that Tony doesn't see him as the big bad in all of this.

" _Sure, but unless he'd been shot in the head or the neck, and one of the guards who'd witnessed that happen had also hitched a ride in the same car to see Barnes come back from it, he's just another of Bruce's undesirables. If he was wearing a uniform, it was an Axis one, right? No one was there at the water stop advertising they were Allied soldiers, right?_ " Tony shoots back with his own tone of acerbity in response to Loki's.

"I was the only one who had the time or the thought to put on the _SS-Totenkopfverbände_ uniform before charging in," Loki can't help but offer, still needling with a subtle rebuke to their 'hot-headed warriors' in attempt to further point out that he had been the only one who'd kept a level head when the plans had gone to total shit.

Like Loki feels the need to _impress_ Tony in another manner if not by his callousness. It would almost be funny, if the situation surrounding this dick measuring contest wasn't so dire.

"But no, the others were all dressed as local civilians."

" _So, Barnes likely arrived at the death camp as just one of the pack. Assuming the guards even bothered to look any of the prisoners over before throwing them into the furnaces, they either saw a guy who had a couple of bullet holes in him so, yay, he isn't going to cause trouble before they get rid of his body, or they saw someone who'd stolen someone else's clothes after_ they'd _been killed, and yay, Barnes isn't just a standard prisoner, but also a filthy thief who deserved to die for desecrating the dead. Which, irony, I know, given all that business with gold fillings and teeth and okay, yes, moving on,"_ Tony says as if he even disgusts himself, _"the operative words here are yay, we get to kill him. Which is what got written down, what you found, and what you had no business to think was a lie. Which is why it has gone undetected for seventy-five years. Even if it_ was _shoot Barnes first before it's into the furnace, Barnes would be ashes before they find out he can regenerate from being shot. Ergo, someone knew about Barnes before he was sent to the camp. So how did that happen, when did it happen, and who saw it happen, the latter most likely being someone from those mental lists I already asked you all to make."_

"Arnim Zola," Clint says from the doorway, the twins at his shoulder and Sam standing behind them. "We made breakfast," he then offers before turning back around and passing through his companions to return to the main room.

Or the dining room, Natasha supposes, though she doubts Clint will eat even if he does sit with them. She'd take away the coffee he no doubt will have in front of him, but he lives on it like he does air, and she's loathed to cause him anymore discomfort, even if it's for his own good. It's not like he can really develop any ulcers to have to worry about long term damage to his stomach lining or esophagus.

" _I know that name,_ " Tony is muttering as Steve unplugs the laptop to take it with him as they move to follow Clint. Natasha searches through her own memories for that name, though she hadn't spent nearly as much time working with Colonel Phillips' people as Clint and Bucky had.

"He was a Swiss biochemist," Bruce makes the identification first, unsurprisingly given the man was a scientist. "His specialty was human genetic studies. The Allies recruited him for insight into Hitler's obsession with a Master Race. Zola seemed to abhor the idea of exterminating those who didn't meet Hitler's criteria as much as the rest of us. I certainly never heard anything about him being even a Nazi sympathizer, but he did disappear off the radar after the war. Not that I gave him much thought or really knew him. He was old enough to have decided he'd had enough after the War and retire back to Switzerland. Given his interest in genetics, however, even if he wasn't secretly a Nazi all along, I can see how finding someone that looked to be immortal could have become something of an obsession, one that the Nazi's would have had fewer qualms about giving him his head in how he ran his experiments than the Allies would have.

"Are you saying Zola witnessed something that happened to Bucky?" Steve asks Clint as they all find places at the table again, consciously or not, repeating the seating arrangements from the meal before.

"He could have,' Clint admitted, sure enough with just a coffee cup in front of him and not one of the plates set in front of the rest of them.

"The day before you died, actually," he tells Steve. "At the time, we thought Zola had caught the tail end of a quick kiss Bucky and I had stupidly exchanged despite knowing better. When nothing came of it though, we figured that at worst, he walked by just as we'd pulled away from each other and that at best he might suspect, but we never gave him any further opportunity to accuse us of being homosexuals. Easy enough, since Bucky was lost only five days later."

"And the reason you were exchanging kisses?" Natasha asks gently, no hint of judgement in her tone. While Clint and Bucky had never particularly hid their relationship as mores and the culture shifted, there had certainly been centuries where discretion had been the watchword, and they knew doing so in the midst of a World War II military camp would have upended everything they were trying to accomplish.

"It was really just a peck, just one of the automatic ones instead of saying thank you."

Natasha reaches out to squeeze Clint's arm in hopes of offering comfort. She felt awful at the thought that they'd left Bucky to torture and madness for all these years, but to wonder now, if it had started because he and Clint had been careless instead of unlucky …

"I'd been fooling around with a couple of the camp dogs, playing fetch and tug-a-war with an old rag," Clint still pushes on, because he has never been one to excuse himself from blame, even when things weren't his fault. "The one-eyed mutt never had a problem with Bucky, but for some reason the shepherd the camp called Bishop because of the white ruff of fur around his neck didn't care for Bucky at all. He'd get aggressive when Bucky got in the way of our play. That afternoon, Bishop got his jaws around Bucky's left arm and a lot of flesh got torn before we got the dog to let go. I wrapped the wound up, mainly so the blood wouldn't get everywhere while it healed, and then afterward Bucky dropped a kiss on my lips after the unwrapping. Zola walked by as Bucky tossed the rag, and from the look he gave Bucky, we thought the jig might be up, but like I said, we never heard any whispers that our behavior had been reported, or had any sense that we were being kept under surveillance. If Zola had been lurking in the area before the kiss, what he could have seen would have been hard to dismiss."

 _"No reason he would have jumped all the way to Bucky being immortal,"_ Tony opines, _"but evidence of accelerated healing in a human? Any geneticist worth his salt would have wanted to find out more. Remarkable as that might be, however, it wouldn't have been something he could approach the Nazis with. Brucie was right about Zola not starting out as a Nazi sympathizer. They would have killed him outright if he tried to approach them, or at best given him enough rope to hang himself as an infiltrator. Scientists didn't just randomly defect to join Hitler unless they were already sympathizers to his Master Race ideas. Making contact with the details of an Allied raid would have gotten him in the door, though, and wow, do I know a lot of banal idioms. Sorry, kids,"_ he then apologizes to the twins, who still seemed to have been able to follow him through context.

"Except Zola wasn't ever included in any Howlies mission strategizing, nor would Command – and certainly not Phillips – have had any reason to approach Zola for input on even an isolated segment of the plan," Steve points out as he helps himself to eggs, bacon, and some of the French toast laid out before them, instead of choosing either the pancakes or the waffles. He doesn't sound like he's denying Tony's speculation, just that they've missed something in it that could be an important factor.

"What if Zola didn't go to the Nazis first?" Clint proposes, finally seeming to achieve some distance from the personal aspects of this and look at the situation tactically. "What if he approached someone he was working with first? So who did he report directly to, and who even recommended him to the SSR? They already had Howard Stark for engineering solutions, why was a genetic scientist there in camp instead of back at Command?"

" _He was working with the military on developing vaccines, specifically for dysentery and syphilis,_ " Tony reads from something on a side screen. " _My guess is some of the troops under Phillips had gotten volunteered for phased trials. But I think Clint is on the right track. Did he have a particular champion, and was_ that _someone part of mission planning?_ "

"Daniel Whitehall," Steve offers up immediately. "He was a Major, part of the Army Signals Intelligence Service. He didn't sit in on too many tactical meetings, but he was always part of the initial strategy sessions."

" _Daniel Whitehall,_ " Tony repeats and again looks off screen. " _His information is sketchy as well as spotty, which isn't all that surprising for a spook. Before the War, it looks like he was psychologist, but I can't find record of where he earned his degrees, where he was born, or who his parents were. He did publish a couple of papers exploring behaviors brought on by biology – what we call Behavioral Genetics today, although the field has changed since it had gotten discredited by the Eugenics movement back then. That interest could have brought Zola to his attention, and made him appear simpatico to Zola in turn._ "

"But a common interest does not turn either man into traitors," Thor points out, almost apologetically, since it _would_ be nice to tie all of this up with a neat bow.

" _True. And just because the records show that Whitehall stayed involved with Allied Command as part of the denazification program in Austria and Germany and acted as an expert witness during the Nuremberg trials, doesn't point to him as a double agent, except for how it could,_ " Tony singsongs. " _Most Americans went home after their time in Germany, while Whitehall chose to relocate to West Berlin, where he stayed right up until his death in '91. I haven't found what he did in Berlin for the last forty years of his life, but FRIDAY will._ "

"I don't understand," Wanda speaks up.

"What part?" Sam asks, his tone encouraging her to continue when she quells under the intensity of the stares that turn her direction.

"Why you are so concerned with all of this … history. Your missing Bucky is an assassin. If you are looking to find him, why don't you just hire him to kill one of you and intercept him?"

Natasha wants to laugh at how stunned Tony looks – how everyone has been struck speechless – but she's feeling no different. She is just much better at schooling her expressions and does it automatically.

" _That, New Girl, is a very interesting idea. It won't work, of course,"_ Tony finally mutters, completely ignoring the noise of outrage Pietro makes at Tony’s cavalier dismissal of Wanda. Clint reaches over to stop Pietro from jumping in, knowing that Tony is too caught up in turning the suggestion into his own, workable plan to even hear Pietro.

" _None of_ you _are important enough to warrant the attention of Rumlow and The Winter Soldier. Friday, run some checks,"_ Tony says flippantly before addressing the virtual assistant AI he developed to monitor the internet and act as aggregator for his search algorithms. " _Find me an engineering, science, or tech conference or symposium that would benefit from having me as a speaker. One that I can bring a guest collaborator with me, Dr. Leonard Samson, and is set to get underway within the next week._ "

"I can't speak in front of an audience, Tony, " Bruce starts at the same time Steve say:

"You are not going to make yourself a target of assassins, Tony."

" _No standing up in front of crowds, having your picture taken, Bruce, I promise. You'll just be there in the audience to answer some questions about the methods and authenticity if they come up, and you'll find that I can, Cap_ ," Tony says without a pause between changing from addressing Bruce to addressing Steve. " _Hell, any time I go out in public I'm a target for something or someone. That's why I have bodyguards. That's why I was going to propose that you and your erstwhile God of Thunder take up those positions for me and Bruce. Natasha can come as my executive assistant, Sam as my bodyman. That would leave Clint to babysit the kids and Loki to play the villain who wants to see me dead and no, that has nothing to do with your race, Sam, or with Loki's contretemps with Clint over Bucky,_ " Tony adds, again all in one breath as his body can barely keep up with his brain or his mouth. " _It's just what makes the most sense and gives us the most favorable odds._ "

 _"Fine, I see you want explanations,"_ Tony continues, not that he can actually see any of their expressions from where the computer's been set on the sideboard, or that he is giving anyone the opportunity to ask for those explanations, or to ask any other questions. But that is the risk they take when involving Tony in their work. The man does love the sound of his own voice and values his own opinions over anyone else's. Fortunately for all their sakes, Tony is also usually right.

" _One, Steve and Thor look like bodyguards. I know you are all skilled and any one of you could manage the part, but it's all about perception in my world. While I'm sure Steve would make an acceptable body man and Sam, or Natasha, a perfectly skilled bodyguard, no one is going to try and give me shit if I have Steve or Thor standing in front of me. Two, I know and have worked with Sam many times, where I don't know you but by reputation, Loki Liesmith, though at some point I would love to talk to you about how the rumors of you birthing a wolf and a horse came about. I'm not calling you a villain, just saying that you would no doubt be convincing in the part._ "

"Oh, I agree, Stark. I am sure I can be convincing when telling someone I want you dead."

"And the babysitting and secretary parts, Tony?" Clint asks sarcastically before Tony can respond to Loki.

" _Perceptions again, babe. You want to switch places and play secretary, I'm down with that. If you're willing to play your gay self. Which might even be better, since the movers and shakers know that Pepper might have things to say about me having a lingerie model taking my dictation, but no one will bat an eye if it's all_ queer eye for the straight guy _."_

"Straight guy my ass," Clint snorts. "Anyone looks up the definition of pansexual, it's your picture that comes – "

 _"It just seemed to me like there has been some bonding going on since yesterday,"_ Tony speaks over Clint, _"and I thought you'd want to keep an eye on the new girl and her weird plus one. Not to mention that someone is going to need to be able to keep an eye out for Bucky keeping an eye over me, and you're the one who would be best in spotting where he might set up if he's going to do the sniping thing again,_ Hawkeye _. But sure. Pick a role and convince me your suggestion works better._ "

" _I have found something, boss_ ," FRIDAY interrupts before things escalate, and incidentally has Natasha suddenly wondering if Alexa is programmed to call Bezos boss. Or if Siri called Jobs that.

She definitely did not get enough sleep after yesterday given how a quick look to a clock says that it has only been four hours since she'd gone out to the balcony.

" _There is an Adaptive Biometrics Systems Conference set to open in six days. One of topics on the schedule is Biometrics of Intent, for which I believe yours and Dr. Samson's caution paper on quantifying observational behavioral screening would secure you an invitation. Should I see about securing them – Oh,_ " FRIDAY interrupts herself this time.

If Tony wants to give a technology talk, all he would have to do is release specs of even a dumbed down version of the various AIs he's developed to have everyone breaking down his door. And many wanting to kill him, Natasha supposes, since he's basically developed Skynet, albeit benevolent versions. Fortunately for the paranoia of mankind, Tony has also realized that the world isn't ready for fully autonomous artificial intelligence and has kept FRIDAY and JARVIS to himself.

" _What 'oh', FRIDAY_?"

" _The conference is in Madripoor_."

"Where is Madripoor?" Wanda asks. "Why is it a problem?"

"You've seen Star Wars, right?" Sam starts.

"Sokovia does have cinemas, cable television, and the internet," she responds dryly. "Yes, we have seen Star Wars. I liked the Prequels, and ship Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan."

Only Clint and Loki react as if they understand Wanda's meaning for the last bit, Clint even going so far as to give a little laugh while Loki shoots her a speculative glance. Tony looks like he's about to ask, but that's one of the reasons he has autonomous artificial intelligent companions, and Natasha holds up her hand to stop the discussion both Sam and Thor look like they want to start over which trilogy was the better in the series.

"What Sam was going to say is that Madripoor is a real world Mos Eisley. It's an island southeast of Singapore, in Southeast Asia," Natasha adds, since she doesn't really know just how much of the rest of the world the twins can place. "It started out as a haven for pirates, and in truth, that hasn't changed in modern day. The nominal government concerns itself only in maintaining the status quo, with the rich and powerful in control of Hightown and various criminal gangs running the streets of Lowtown. No extradition to any other country, and money or information will buy you almost anything. If we look at arranging for something to happen in Madripoor, we'll have more assassins than just Rumlow or the Winter Soldier to worry about, along with likely kidnapping attempts." 

_"But we would also have fewer questions to deal with if some people end up dead or disappeared since you're not going to let any of that happen,"_ Tony points out, because of course the thought of Madripoor doesn't scare him. 

It scares Natasha, but so does the idea of postponing going after Bucky. Wait too long, and Clint is going to go off on his own.

"Is there any other event that meets Tony's criteria, FRIDAY?" she asks the AI. "If you broaden the criteria to high level business, maybe a proposal out there that Stark Industries might give a pass on, but that Tony could conceivable take a personal interest in just to stick it to his board of directors?"

Tony makes no attempt to object, since he has a track record of doing just that, although he has toned it down in the past few years after he elevated Pepper to taking over the role as CEO of his company while he remains Chairman of the Board, the majority stock holder, and Stark Industries CTO, but mainly its chief engineer and inventor.

" _Nothing within even doubling the timeframe,"_ FRIDAY answers. " _There are two proposals that Stark Industries has already bid on, one in Budapest, and one in Hong Kong, that the boss could show up in an attempt to charm the contract, but it is likely it would be seen as an attempt to unfairly influence the decision making process and indeed cause SI to lose the bid. Ms. Potts' instructions preclude me from offering any options that I deem jeopardizes the business. I could ask her for special dispensation –_ "

"But that would have you telling her why you wanted to counter your instructions, and I don't think she would take to kindly to knowing that you're offering yourself up as a sacrificial lamb," Steve stops that avenue.

" _I prefer to see myself as the stalking horse, or better yet, the heroic decoy. Yes, I imagine you can pull this off without me, but if I'm there, I'm the one they're going to be looking at, and I'm a ready-made reason for the rest of you being on hand. The power running Madripoor might be corrupt and as crooked as Lombard Street in San Francisco, but they aren't stupid. Even they won't want the press from Tony Stark getting killed in their country, so we're not going to have to worry about the authorities taking a hand."_

"That's only true if we try to do things in Madripoor," Bruce counters. "We can pick another city. Any other city. I'm sure one of us still has an identity we could resurrect that might merit attention from a pair of assassins."

" _And from Interpol, the FBI, or the PAP, although I want to believe that none of you are stupid enough to want to try something like this in China,"_ Tony says mockingly. " _Although,_ we _could do it in China. Tony Stark is welcome in China._ "

"Not when Tony Stark is referring to himself in the third person," Sam mocks back. "I don't like the idea of Madripoor either, and I especially don't like the idea of putting a target on Tony's back, but he's not wrong about bringing him making things easier. We will have a lot more freedom to do whatever we need to if we're in Madripoor, and can move as a group if we're with him, without attracting undue concern from any of the more savvy gangs. With Tony as the target, it's also pretty unlikely that Rumlow is going to be suspicious and think he and the Winter Soldier are being setup, which they might with a target on just some regular schmoe."

"I understand why everyone has abandoned dwelling on the past and how we lost track of Bucky to consider how we can set Stark up for assassination," Loki brings up with a biting smile, "but I think we still have to consider who took him, if only to figure out how they have managed to keep him for all of the intervening years. Not in keeping him docile and without his memories," he quickly adds off of a couple of dark looks aimed his way, "but more in the how they kept it secret.

"Except for the part where they couldn't have" he reminds them, speaking over whatever point Thor stops himself from making, "since anyone of a reasonable age to have been involved back then is now likely dead, and definitely too old to be running the operation. So we're talking about an organization, not just one or two people, with the secret getting passed down. From Wanda's dreams, obviously Crossbones knows what Bucky is, but there can't be anyone here who is serious thinking that Crossbones is in charge," he adds with a huff. "Crossbones is no less a tool than Bucky, and we had best not make our plans without acknowledging that someone else is pulling the strings. I'd prefer that this person gets identified before I make contact and put out the hit."

" _So you're one of the smart ones,"_ Tony comments, causing Loki to preen and Natasha to win the bet she'd made to herself that Loki has been measuring himself against Tony.

" _That kind of information is going to have to be dug out and while it's pretty impossible to stay out of records on the internet, unless you have someone like me scrubbing your histories and spoofing what I can't, there is a lot of history – even about WW2 – that hasn't been uploaded yet._ " Tony continues. _"It's fortunate that you're in the heart of its European theatre; some of you can go play tourist and hit some of the paper archives, maybe even a couple of you can take a day trip to Berlin and see if you can track down some more about Whitehall's later years. He might have just been an opportunist, but it's always possible he was a sleeper agent from the start, which means any of the people he came in contact with after the War could have been his handlers. If you can dig up names of neighbors, landlords, employers… anything you can come up with to give to FRIDAY and JARVIS is going to draw us closer to the super-secret society that's holding onto Barnes._ "

" _Oh, and one more thing,"_ Tony brings up as Steve gets up and blocks the screen as he gets ready to cut the connection. " _Those of you who are going to be working for me in a few days, make sure you upgrade your wardrobe. Bespoke or at least made-to-measure tailoring. Although they're not taking new customers, go to Knize. I'll confirm that you're there on my say so, and that it's a rush job. You'd best get at least four suits and say eight shirts. If the rest of you want new togs, feel free to put it on my account. Natasha, I can get with Pepper and see if she has a favorite shop –_ "

"I can find my own clothing, Tony," Natasha interrupts him. "I can afford to buy my own, too, even the styles you think I'll need to fit in with your sartorial splendor."

" _As you say, but don't forget to add designer shoes. Okay, so we should check back in with each other, say ten hours from now. See what's been uncovered. Regardless, I'll release an announcement tomorrow that I'm going to attend the conference, and head to Hong Kong on the day after and spend a couple of days there doing inspections at the SI facilities. You guys should get to Hong Kong the day before we'll leave for Madripoor and take over for the staff I'll send back home. Loki, at the moment it's just a guessing game on whether you'll need to do a face-to-face with Rumlow, and if so, where. You're going to have to make all your own arrangements, but if you need help with passports and IDs, get the private link to FRIDAY from Natasha, and you'll get whatever you need. Clint, I don't know –_ "

"I can get myself to Madripoor, with or without the twins in tow, depending on how things are looking. Don't worry about us."

Clint has several ready-made identities – they all do, of course – but he has one in particular that is well-suited to places like Madripoor, and that Natasha knows from his look that he's considering using. While she won't be happy to see Clint become Ronin again, she can't deny that Ronin's ruthlessness and reputation will be of use. Nor is she about to deny him anything in his quest to get Bucky back.

"Thank you, Tony. We'll be in touch," Natasha wraps things up, signaling Steve to end the connection before Tony comes up with one more one more thing. "Nothing that we have to do can't wait for a few more hours," she says as she gets up from the table. "Including the dishes. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going back to bed until lunch."

Of course, Natasha has no idea if she'll actually be able to fall asleep again, but she definitely needs a couple of hours to herself to deal, and figures that it's the same for the others.

*****

Nails and hair, for some reason, are the couple of things with their immortality that work for them as it does for the rest of humanity. Sure, their nails and hair follicles restore themselves when ripped out or damaged – no balding or thinning hair to worry about – but otherwise they can be cut, dyed, and styled to any fashion, and grow back at the same speed as the next person's. This means that all the new hairstyles, cuts, and colors, along with designer clothes over serviceable ones, and the odd pair of glasses that are adorning the people standing next to her, keep distracting Natasha. It's like working with people she doesn't know.

Bruce is perhaps the most pronounced in his differences, although some of that is also because of the complete personality shift he's also adopted; all flash and grand confidence instead of his more quiet, bemused normal. First bleaching and then dying his natural dark hair, Bruce – or rather Leonard Samson – sports green hair. Not fluorescent green, but it's still bright and attention grabbing, like something out of anime or a comic book. He's also using product to straighten and slick it back, and while it isn't anywhere near long enough to give him a man bun or even tie it back, it's not the tight cap of curls he's kept for centuries either. Between that, a pair of light colored glasses frames, and a wardrobe that consists of band shirts, ripped jeans, and several pairs of Doc Martens that he and Clint picked out for him at a couple of vintage stores while still in Vienna, he's the poster boy for Silicon Valley chic, with just the hint of a former black hat now wearing a white one.

Thor, too, has taken a more radical appearance for his new persona, Donald Blake. Whereas before he had hair straight out of an 80s band, honey blond and with a slight curl that he still wore straight and hung down past his shoulders most of the time, he's lopped it all off for a close, not quite military cut couple of inches, lightening it and his eyebrows and beard too, so that he's now a very Nordic platinum white – much more Euro punk than Viking now. Unlike Steve's very classic, gangster-cut suits, Thor manages to pull off menacing in his tapered, skinny leg European-cut suits that nevertheless got tailored to accommodate the single shoulder holster he's opted to use as one of Tony's bodyguards.

Neither Steve nor Sam have done anything so drastic, nor even changed their names for the mission, but then Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson aren't particularly uncommon or memorable names to have to worry about. Steve _has_ managed to grow a respectable beard in time they had to prep, and has actually loosened not just his hair style by going natural and without any styling products, but is also consciously foregoing his military posture and deference, showing the world the man that they normally only ever saw back when Peggy had still been alive, or in the rare instances when they'd set aside missions for a while and just hung out as friends. None of this is to say that Steve doesn't wear his very nice, if very American suit and double shoulder holster well, as he most certainly does, but he hasn't yet fully inhabited his role, which is still fine, as no one is going to mistake him as anything other than ex-military and freshly come to the private sector to boot, which fits as part of Tony's entourage.

Sam's is the subtlest transformation. He's simply trimmed up everything to a razor finish, as would be expected from personal assistant accompanying Tony out in public. Took the time to get a professional facial and groomed nails too. Natasha has always thought Sam wears suits better than any of the other of her boys; that he might indeed rival Tony in one, and now that he's gone designer and bespoke, she's ready to fight anyone who says that Tony still cuts the sharpest figure.

As for herself, she's taken a spa day too, electing also to get a soft perm and a darker rinse to make her hair stand out just that little bit more. Because she foolishly let Tony do the bio a few years back, Natalie Rushman is indeed a former lingerie model who dresses accordingly, but as that had only been to help get her through law school and she can still type sixty words a minute _and_ take dictation, she's designer suits and walkway dresses fitted but not too tight, all classic lines and shades, with only her perfectly coifed hair and red soled Louboutin shoes adding splashes of color. She can't get away with a holster, so her gun stays in her purse next to a comb with a knife in its handle. She's also picked up a series of decorative hair sticks that carry hidden stilettos, as well as an expandable baton, though she's not sure when it will be appropriate to carry that.

While plenty of photos get snapped in Hong Kong and start trending, Tony has insured that he's the focus of any public outing, offering himself as a target for more than just cameras. The rest of them have plenty of practice in keeping their faces down, turned, or covered with hats or sunglasses, anyway, and to any fans and press, it's obvious that they're just staff and, therefore, nobodies. Undoubtedly Rumlow or someone working for him is paying significantly more attention to Tony's crew, but they'll find only what's been manufactured and afterward, whether they are successful in extracting Bucky or not, all of the background details and images will disappear from on-line sources, even the archival records, thanks to Tony's pervasive, mostly passive viruses that scrub all trace of information he doesn't want out there. If it's electronic, it's got a piece of Stark tech in it, and not for the first time is Natasha aware that in many ways Tony is only a bad day away from becoming a Bond Villain.

Madripoor would certainly be the perfect place for him to decide he wants to take over the world.

Since nothing but the best works for Tony Stark, they've set up in a hotel separate from where the conference is being held. While none of the international hoteliers have ever been able to buy property on the island, all of the independently-owned resorts have obviously poached knowledgeable personnel and other-wise cherry-picked all of the best architectural and hospitality staples from the most stylish and highest reviewed hotels in the world. Designed by the same architectural team that produced the Shanghai Tower in China, The K'un-Lun is a futuristic skyscraper of spiraled glass and steel on the exterior, while the interior is a mix of the modern and the spiritual; the lobby as well as the top three floors comprising the penthouse reflective of something that ascribed itself as the Palace of Heaven. Frankly, it made their suite in Vienna look old and shabby in comparison, and Natasha didn't want to think about what it is costing Tony to rent per night.

Staying at the K'un-Lun also means that they've got a fifteen minute limousine to the conference each day Tony decides to attend, which gives any assassin a window of opportunity on the route instead of infiltrating the conference or his hotel to try and take Tony out in a crowd of potential collateral damage. Not that Crossbones has a reputation about caring whether he has to go through innocents to get to his target, but the Winter Soldier is known to be more precise.

Loki has done his part. He, Clint, and the twins all departed a couple of days before the rest of them flew out to meet Tony. Between the two of them, Loki and Clint have plenty of contacts in society's underbelly, and Natasha doesn't need to know how Loki made contact with Crossbones any more than she cares how Clint gets himself and the twins to Madripoor. She has enough confidence in both to not worry about the hows, confidence that is not displaced since they'd both quickly confirm that their plans are proceeding apace. Once Loki leaves a message that Crossbones took the contract, Clint tells them he's gone aground in Lowtown after setting the twins up with a friend who owns a modest home in Hightown. Unfortunately Natalie Rushman has no reason to go visit the Princess Bar, so Thor is the one who dropped off sets of Tony's high-powered comm units instead of Natasha greeting and adding her thanks to Tyger Tiger for looking after her family.

Since Stark Industries manufactures tactical communications systems for a variety of militaries, Tony's set them up with not just the top-of-the-line earbuds, but altered the comms to use their Stark cell phones as base units. Running the system through JARVIS by way of orbiting SI satellites, Tony is guaranteeing they can't be intercepted or hacked. He's also claiming his augmentations have given the comms a range of at least ten miles, which means that everyone should be able to hear one another no matter where they are within Madripoor. 

Natasha is still surprised to hear Loki on the system, however. Sure, she'd made sure an extra unit was available for him just in case but their plan doesn't rely on Loki's presence in Madripoor. Last she'd known, he'd met with Rumlow in Mumbai. She's not about to turn down his assistance, though; after fighting at their side for nearly two thousand years, the last seventy-five notwithstanding, he's a formidable fighter as well as crafty one.

Neither is she about to deny him an opportunity to make further amends to Bucky or Clint if that's his current inclination.

 _"Whoever runs Rumlow and the Winter Soldier has grown nervous,"_ Loki's voice interrupts the lunch the group has just sat down to. _"Rumlow's now asking whether I can make contact with whichever of you I seduced to get the information about Stark going to Madripoor, to get information on when Stark is going to be in public without Dr. Samson in tow. It seems the rest of you are fine as collateral damage, but there is concern about killing Bruce's hacker persona. Maybe they're considering a kidnapping or recruitment instead for Samson?"_

Their comms are currently set to passively receive whenever someone on the system goes active with their transmission. Once any actual confrontation or extraction gets underway, they go voice-active live to transmit and receive, but at the moment, Steve's the one who clicks his earbud to respond, since if there is anyone who is watching, it would make more sense for one of the bodyguards to be in constant contact with a security coordinator.

"What do you mean whichever of us you seduced?" Steve asks, voice tight and embarrassed, while Tony and Bruce exchange a look of confusion – about someone not wanting Leonard Samson to die, Natasha suspects, not because Loki is intentionally having some fun at Steve's expense.

_"Well, I had to tell Rumlow something when I first approached him, both for my reasons behind wanting Stark dead, and how I happened to know when there would be a great window of opportunity to do the hit. So I told him that one of you thought I would be impressed by your pillow talk. I did make sure he understood that that person isn't out for revenge or looking to betray Stark, just that you don't know how to be indiscreet. I left which one of you I've slept with unidentified so he didn't get any of his own ideas of taking advantage, and because I wasn't about to trap Natasha into an outdated stereotype without her agreeing to it first. So choose lots amongst you as to which of you caught my eye so I can meet up with you later."_

Natasha would have to remember later to thank him for that, since it shows that Loki has managed to keep up with the changing mores and current movements especially of the last decade or so, even if she also thinks he's more out to embarrass one of the men than to spare Natalie Rushman's reputation. While, technically, she thinks they will all eventually identify as bi-sexual, especially as the years pass away from them, at the moment neither Steve nor Sam have yet chosen a male lover despite their growing attraction to one another.

"I don't think – "

_"Then let someone else do so for you, Rogers. You're under surveillance; you have been since the plane landed. While I can say I couldn’t get a hold of you today to set something up for this evening, they will be expecting me to prove my claim of having an inroad into Stark's security, and every day that gets delayed gives them another day to reconsider my offer and bow out of the contract. Or bring in more men and damn the consequences. The only reason they haven't decided to just blow up the damn conference is because some of the speakers are useful, but that, too, diminishes as certain people leave when their events are over."_

"Mind your words," Thor chides sotto voice though he's also activated his comm to transmit, relieving Natasha from having to do so and potentially attract unwanted attention.

"And find your sport when this is over and we can celebrate with cheer and pranks," Thor continues. "Rent a room for yourself in the K'un-Lun. You and I can accidently run into one another in the hotel bar in a couple of hours. What name are you using?"

 _"Luke Laufeysson,"_ Loki replies, sounding less put out than Natasha would have thought for the rebuke. 

_"Luke is a business rival who has reason to fear that Stark's decision to come to Madripoor means that he is showing a greater interest in the island. That such involvement will upset the delicate balance Hightown has with the Triads and the remnants of The Hand that continues to thrive here despite us killing Gao. I am beginning to believe that our mystery puppeteer has some of the same concerns about Stark, although my offer could just be an opportunity to eliminate someone they've always intended to take out in the future. It's not like anyone outside of a handful of people would turn their nose at a half a_ billion _dollars payout."_

"If you can determine whether it is opportunity, money, or something else that's motivating Crossbones' people, that could give us more names or at least eliminate some from the lists of potential men behind the curtain," Steve suggests to Loki now that he's recovered his aplomb. "That and anything else you can bring with you tonight should help us update our plans and give you something to take back that puts the hit fully on our terms. I'd like to get Rumlow taken off the board as well as get Bucky back where he belongs. "

 _"Amen to that,"_ Clint chimes in from where he's been hanging out in Lowtown, his desire to find Bucky coloring his tone even as he brings up an additional concern. _"Rumlow isn't the only one giving Tony some consideration here. At the moment, just the presence of Crossbones and the threat of the Winter Soldier is keeping any other opportunists in check, but if the word gets out that someone has specifically put out a bounty to take Tony out, you might find a couple of extra people looking to try and cash in themselves._ _I can monitor the situation and give you the names of anyone thinking to grab some glory, but I'm not really in a position to stop them. At least not unless there is no other choice in keeping Tony alive."_

While Ronin is a killer himself, he isn't a gun for hire. Rather, Clint built that persona's reputation as a lone wolf who meted out his own brand of justice and retribution, honorable but ruthless. Even the worst of those who make a living walking the shadows are wary of doing something to put themselves on Ronin's radar, but Clint won't intercede unless he intends to make it known that Tony Stark is under Ronin's protection, and then enforce that protection by eliminating those who chose to act against him. Including Crossbones and the Winter Soldier. Natasha has no doubt that Clint would burn his Ronin persona in a heartbeat in trade for Bucky's return, but she doesn't think they're there yet.

"Well, gentlemen," Natasha address the men at the table with her, "as entertaining as this lunch has been, I'm afraid we are still on a schedule." She pauses and picks up her phone as if she'd just felt it vibrate with a text. "Mr. Stark, I'm afraid that your plans to spend the afternoon at the conference will have to be postponed if not completely broken. The conference call with Ms. Potts that was scheduled for this evening has been shifted to an hour from now. The materials you will need are back in the hotel room." She doesn't speak to be overheard intentionally, but if someone is monitoring them, her words are unassailable, since everyone knows that Tony only behaves to the crack of Pepper's whip, not SI's board and certainly not his executive assistant's.

Tony gives her a look, but he's smart enough to determine that she's simply rearranging things so that he goes back with Bruce to the hotel as a matter of safety while they plan how to set Rumlow and Bucky up; there is no conference call scheduled to be rescheduled. He gives her a nod, and then turns a smile on Bruce, before turning to Sam, who nods and gets up to make arrangements for their transport to be brought to the front of the conference hotel by valet.

They won't relax their vigilance, of course, because while she has no doubt that Loki is telling the truth as he knows it, they have no way of knowing whether he'd been told the truth or whether Crossbones' people are working their own angle to set Loki up as the fall guy regardless of how things work out.

Uncovering who is holding Rumlow's leash is definitely moving up her priority list.

*****

For all that they've practically gift wrapped Tony by having Bruce accept an invitation for Dr. Samson to join a small contingent of experts to meet with Madripoor's Chancellor to discuss cybersecurity at the Palace and, therefore, cutting Tony's security in half by having Thor accompany Bruce for _his_ protection, Natasha is beginning to think the attack isn't going to come today, since they are only a mile from their hotel, driving through the financial center of Hightown, where any collateral damage could bring down people of import on par with Tony. They've ruled out it happening at the hotel itself, since that would need something up close and through Tony's security, as even exiting his car at the valet is protected from any sniper shot. No, it should have happened when he was leaving the conference, when he was getting into his vehicle, since once he was inside nothing short of a rocket launcher could make it past the reinforced metal and glass.

Bucky only uses a grenade launcher attached to what looks like a M4A1 Carbine, but that turns out to work well enough as he stands in the middle of the street ahead of them and aims at the front of their SUV, firing two shots in very quick succession not at the vehicle itself, but the road underneath them.

"Shit! Hang on," Sam warns, breaking off from the update he'd been giving Loki and Clint who were waiting for their return at The K'un-Lun. He twists the wheel to the right but it's too late to dodge. The rounds explode under the front end and in the next moment the vehicle is lifting from the ground due to the concussive force of high explosives, bucking and pitching back down in the front to smash on the road, blowing out both front tires and the windshield.

They're all disoriented, and for a moment Natasha can only watch as Bucky struts toward them, the rifle still in hand but down as if he wants to get up close and personal for the kill. He's wearing some sort of tactical armor, along with what appears to be a thick metal collar on his neck, and she's reminded of Bruce's speculation that his handlers are using pain to keep Bucky lost in his head and under their control. If that's indeed a shock collar of some sort, that has to mean that someone – Crossbones most likely – is nearby with the controller.

"Out, get out," Steve screams as Bucky brings the rifle back up.

The SUV's frame has twisted, and for a moment Natasha's door won't open as she tries with one hand while she's ripping out of her seat belt with her other. But once free from the belt, she pushes against the door with her shoulder this time as she grabs for the lever with her cross hand. In the next moment she's spilling from her seat and trying to roll so that she can get her feet under her and sprint away from the car. It doesn’t quite work that way, especially not when someone presses her down against the ground, but in the next second she hears the steady repeat of Steve's gun, the sound deafening but still welcome, as it means he's also gotten himself out and is making sure she doesn't get in the way of his returned fire. When he taps her on the shoulder (when more shots now come from the other side of the vehicle that must be from Sam, she rises to a crouch and races toward several parked cars on the side of the road she can hide behind.

At the moment she can't hear if Tony's also moved away behind her – at the moment she can't hear anything – but then she has to worry when Bucky fires again, this time over their SUV so that the next grenade explodes amidst the cluster of cars that had been driving behind them, creating a barrier of damaged or just stopped and hopefully abandoned cars, with their passengers joining other panicked bystanders or injured victims.

Someone has gone for a bold move here, brazen, messy, and bound to bring around what passes for law enforcement in Madripoor. There could be no good reason to take such a foolish risk in upsetting the locals, unless –

"Tony, if you're approached by people claiming to be local cops, do not go with them!" Natasha yells as she's activating her comm, hoping that he can hear her better than the muffled tones she can barely make out despite being the one saying them. At least if she's blown out her eardrum, it's already healing.

"He's out but I've got him," Steve is saying, his voice also muffled. "I'll get him off the street."

Natasha's own Glock sits on the floor well of their incapacitated SUV. She'd managed to clear it from her purse after seeing Bucky coming out into the street, but hadn't been able to keep hold of it when they'd been rocked by the first explosions. She needs to get a weapon somehow, to help Steve and Sam lay down suppressing fire. Perhaps she can find Bucky's handler or back up –

Before she sees anything useful, Natasha feels a grip on her arm. She twists, ready to send away some helpful Samaritan or fight one of Bucky's allies. But it's Steve, Tony limp over his shoulder, and he's holding out one of his guns for her to take as if he's read her mind. She takes the Smith and Wesson M&P with a grateful nod. They've all taken the time to familiarize themselves with each other's preferred weapons for situations just like this.

 _"Loki and I are five minutes out,"_ she then hears Clint say more distinctly through her comm. 

Even if they'd been waiting in the lobby, it would take at least that long just to get to a car in the parking garage and make their way to the street. A street that is most likely just as jammed up as this one. So that means the two of them are running (unless they stole a handy motorcycle – but then he would have said they were only a couple minutes out), going hell for leather over what she hopes is no more than three quarters of a mile. Even so, they're going to be spent when they arrive, and Natasha still didn't have a handle on the scope of the situation to give them more than a basic head’s up. Nor is she sure that they can hold out for five minutes.

"Look out for Crossbones," she warns. "Bucky's launched the assault. I think there is some sort of device around his neck that's keeping him on task. If it has a decent range, someone might be monitoring it remotely, but I don't see how they can afford to leave Bucky able to act on his own for too long before his memories start coming back. They have to be prepared to drop him and then get him immediately into a van or something. If Rumlow's not in charge of that, he's going to be around to finish the hit while others deal with Bucky's body."

 _"Not this time,"_ Clint vows.

Natasha certainly agrees, but she's afraid they're going to have to take Bucky down themselves to stop him. While he's given up on the grenade launcher, he's now firing a compact submachine gun he got from the back of his tac vest, and Natasha can see that he still has handgun holsters on each leg, meaning he's not really going to have to take the time to reload for a while when he can just keep switching weapons. She's also still concerned that Bucky is just a feint, since he's firing indiscriminately, and without any of his finesse, not even really aiming Steve and Tony's direction.

She takes careful aim, not targeting to kill him (not yet), but to give him a bullet hole or two to slow him down. The three rounds she fires from his current blindside hit his left arm in rapid succession but he shrugs them off like he doesn't even feel them. She aims her next four shots at his weapon and has more success this time, although it does mean his next few shots from one of his handguns come her way, one of them punching through her shoulder and leaving her gasping for a few moments while she masters the pain.

Damn, but in some ways she prefers just dying outright. Getting shot fucking hurts, and even their bodies have to deal with the racing heartbeats or the dropping blood pressure of shock before healing kicks in.

 _"Natasha?"_ Clint asks in between his own harsh breathing as he responds to what he heard from her, Steve and Sam echoing him.

"I'm fine," she says reassuringly. "But it looks like we're going to run out of bullets before he does, if we just keep going at it like this. We've got to find a way to slow him down and maybe bring Crossbones out into the open. Has anyone seen – "

 _"Sir has regained consciousness and has instructed me to tap into all local traffic and security cameras,"_ JARVIS suddenly breaks across their communications. _"I am identifying all known felons in your immediate area, and will cross-match with known associates of Crossbones or the Winter Soldier. Unfortunately, given the number of criminals who take advantage of Madripoor's relationship with law enforcement, there are many more than are typically found in a metropolitan of this size, and determining which ones might just be innocent bystanders, if such words can be applied to murderers, thieves, and cutthroats, against those who are getting paid to be here will take a couple of minutes. You do have law enforcement converging on your position, although they are being stymied by the traffic congestion as well as something of a hysterical mob that has tried to clear the area. I will do what I can to ascertain whether they are legitimate peace officers or wolves in sheep's clothing."_

JARVIS would pass the Turning test a hundred times over and has, in fact, done so more than once with people like the American Secretary of State and any number of board members for Stark Industries that Tony has no time for. Along with FRIDAY, JARVIS is Tony's biggest secret outside of knowing what Natasha and the others are, and the two AIs are unquestionably his greatest achievements for all that the world doesn't know they exist.

Natasha prefers thinking that Edwin would be proud knowing he'd meant so much to the boy he helped raise while Howard was too busy building up SI, but she wonders how Edwin would have felt discovering just how detailed – and how unfathomably well – that Tony managed to program Edwin's personality and dry wit into a bunch of silicon chips. While Edwin Jarvis had eventually become Howard Stark's estate manager and been very, very good at his job of looking after Howard and then Tony, as well the Stark household, Edwin had first been a British soldier and then Howard's agent in the field after the war, excelling at rousting out the gold diggers and the provocateurs attracted by Howard's fame and wealth before Howard had met Maria. Natasha has no idea how Tony has also been able to incorporate Edwin's traits of ingenuity and cleverness, and she fears (if mostly in the back of her mind) the day when Tony puts his genius to robotics and comes up with a body that will pair with one of his AI's intellect. Thinking Skynet and Tony isn't all that farfetched, though JARVIS would definitely be the later, nice version of Arnold's Terminator.

 _"If Bucky is being controlled remotely in some fashion, wouldn't there be a signal. And wouldn't that signal be traceable?"_ Loki asks.

 _"Indeed,"_ JARVIS answers just ahead of Tony's instruction to JARVIS to start looking.

On the one hand, it's definitely a good thing that for all of JARVIS' ability to show initiative, there are still safeguards in place so that Tony's permission is required to perform certain acts. On the other hand, JARVIS is undoubtedly already steps ahead of them, so waiting not just for permission but for one of them to think of an option that might need permission could cost them everything.

_"Tony, should you tell JAR – "_

_"No,"_ Tony cuts Sam off. _"JARVIS has to have limitations. He's already smarter, faster, and more capable than any of us. Even if I did use Steve's sense of morality as JARVIS' template – "_

 _"You what?"_ Steve cries out in mortification more than outrage, and thus proves Tony's point.

 _"I don't give a fuck,"_ Clint cuts off the ensuing argument before it can get underway. " _If JARVIS can track the signal, doesn't that mean he can shut it down, Tony?"_

 _"Probably not without shutting down everything else in the immediate vicinity."_ Tony answers.

 _"Well, as far as I know, there aren't any hospitals on your block. So what's the problem?"_ again from Clint.

_"Outside the illegality of setting of an EMP?"_

Like this firefight? Natasha almost says, but it would be to no purpose. She imagines that even this level of comms use is illegal.

 _"Madripoor,"_ is Clint's one word rejoinder.

_"Point, McClintock, but dropping an EMP doesn't mean it'll stop Bucky. He seems pretty focused on killing me."_

_"Then we give him something else to focus on,"_ Steve suggests.

A good idea, even if Natasha, not for the first time, is no longer sure that Tony's previous statement is right. Bucky is still firing off his guns, but he's made no additional moves forward and hasn't actually aimed any shots at Tony since the first grenades. Just in Tony's general direction. It's more like he's now keeping _them_ focused on _him_ instead of getting Tony out of danger. Again Natasha has to wonder if Bucky is the real threat here. She can't think of anyway that Bucky's handlers could have identified that they are also immortal. The coincidence of that happening at the same time they discovered that Bucky is alive would be too big even for Bollywood, much less Hollywood. If their secret has been safe for seventy-five years, what changed now –

Motherfucking pussbuckets! She is a fucking idiot.

"Clint, where are Wanda and Pietro right now?" Gods, but how Natasha hopes she's wrong.

 _"At Tyger Tiger's home,"_ comes his answer. _"I figured we'd need to move quick if we ended up getting Bucky, and didn't want to have to track them down or split us up. Why? What are – damn. Right, she's had a week of nightmares because she hasn't yet met up with Bucky. Even without his memories, Bucky will think it odd that he keeps dreaming about a girl getting shot in Sokovia. You're thinking whoever has him has figured out what the dreams mean?"_

 _"Stop,"_ Loki breaks in. _"Yes, they might have figured out about Wanda, but we've no reason to think they have identified her, much less located her. You are only distracting yourself by ascribing Bucky's handlers with knowledge they cannot have. For this to be a feint to draw us out_ or _draw us away, they would have to know that Tony is aware that immortals exist, and that he's involved in hiding the twins, whether we're personally involved or not. They might be suspicious of my motivations, or think that Tony's somehow set them up to be arrested or something, but there is no way they could have put the rest of it together. Not unless Tony himself is the one holding Bucky's collar."_

Loki's right, he has to be, because anything else is too absurd and impossible. If Bucky broke at some point during his captivity and told them the ins and outs of immortality as they understand it, his handlers would have come after one of them, and before they had reason to get back together. She also has to believe Loki's implication of Tony's involvement is just hyperbole, his way of further pointing out the absurdity by offering something else just as outlandish.

Gods, but she hates feeling paranoid and second-guessing herself. Her guilt over Yelena really has crippled her, something Natasha hasn't wanted to believe, just as she refused to see the signs of Yelena's instability before Gao even got to her. And now she’s seeing conspiracies everywhere, and doubting her instincts when she needs to be on the top of her game.

Although Natasha knows it's reckless, right now she just needs to take some sort of action, to get out of her head. Hopefully it might also break the stalemate they've fallen into with Bucky, if nothing else. She doesn't give anyone a heads-up or ask for covering fire. Instead, she waits until Bucky's swings his attention back to plink a few shots at Sam instead of her, then gathers her feet under her and charges Bucky's position.

He starts to turn back her direction, but she's fast and he's sent back from the impact of one of Sam's bullets to his chest anyway, his vest likely stopping it instead of him just shrugging it off. Instead of trying to displace him with her shoulder (healed, mostly, but not completely), she times a jump so that she can knee him in the stomach, throwing him back a step farther. Following up with a quick punch to his groin that he manages to partially block, she then has to spin away because he's still nearly as fast as she is and has a good fifty pounds of muscle on her. He turns to follow her instead of just shooting, giving her the chance to kick the gun from his hand and end that immediate threat although he's still got at least one gun holstered, and no doubt a knife or two at hand.

His backhand catches her across the jaw and sends her sprawling and with tears coming to her eyes as the bone cracks. For a moment she thinks he has managed to pull another weapon that he hit her with, but two successive shots from Steve hit Bucky's left arm and she now sees it is much worse. The bullets spark and ricochet off his arm. Somehow, they've fitted Bucky with a prosthetic, made from some sort of articulating plates of metal that glints through the rents in his sleeves. Somehow, they've figured out a way to suppress Bucky's ability to regrow his arm without also suppressing his ability to heal from anything else, she confirms as one of Sam's bullet gets ejected from Bucky's other arm.

Sam has moved to fight alongside her, while Steve is remaining back to guard Tony – and to keep an eye out for Rumlow or local law enforcement. They can't both take on Bucky at the same time without getting in each other's way, so Natasha lets Sam take the lead while she shifts her jaw back in place, wincing in sympathy when Sam gets in a kick to Bucky's jaw. When Sam spins to kick him again, Bucky manages to catch at Sam's thigh and tumble him and slamming Sam crashing into the hood of one of the abandoned cars that crumples under the force. So does Sam.

Still, that leaves her an opening to Bucky's back. She leaps and twists to get a thigh around his neck so that her sudden weight forces him down and off balance. Some part of Bucky is still in there – his muscle memory if nothing more – since it's a move very few men are able to counter, but he's regained his equilibrium and suddenly puts his hands around her waist to pry her off. She gets in a good clap around his ears, but then it's her turn to get dropped onto a car and get the breath knocked out of her. Only he doesn't let go of her like he did Sam, and the damn _metal_ hand moves from her waist to her neck as he pins her there. For a moment he just stares at her, but then that hand starts to squeeze.

 _You could at least recognize me_ , Natasha wants to call out to him, to try and reach the flash that she hopes she just saw in his eyes, but if Bucky has his own comm and is under observation like they suspect, saying something like that would give his handlers the information Loki's more or less convinced her they don't already have. So instead she takes a different tack, letting the tears she would normally keep at bay start streaming while she just says please in a vulnerable and frightened tone. While Bucky was no more a chauvinist than any of the other men she associates with, by the time he'd been born in the part of the world now known as Romania, gender roles formed by the rise of the patriarchy were taking their hold across known civilization, and while Bucky hadn't necessarily grown up thinking women were inferior, he had taken to heart his role to protect them, something that four thousand years of living hadn't really diminished. 

Once more Bucky stays his hand. Natasha doesn't struggle, doesn't fight, and for a second she thinks it's going to work, but Bucky then jerks and she hears the sizzle like from a stun gun and a muffled "finish her" from the comm she is right that Bucky wears.

"Tony, shut it all down," she chokes out as she also raises her hand to rake across Bucky's eyes. Sam obviously has been hurt worse than she'd hoped, so she is going to have to get herself out of this. Or let him kill her. But again, with someone watching the fight directly to give Bucky specific orders, she can't let that watcher see her die and come back.

Bucky rears back, pulling her up with him but also drawing her close enough that she can grab for the knife he wears strapped under his armpit. She gets in a couple of jabs with it into his side before he lets go of her neck to instead grab at her wrist and break it and her hold on the knife. He then catches the knife before it falls too far and she has only a moment to hope that this won't be a death she doesn't come back from, not for her own sake but for Bucky's afterward, after Clint and the others get him safe.

Before the blade falls, Steve is abruptly there to intercept Bucky's strike, blocking forearm to forearm while also pulling Natasha out and away from where she'd been wedged against the car, He's not gentle but it's nothing she can't shake off as she rolls out from under their feet before getting caught, _captivated_ , watching as Steve and Bucky begin to dance in a unbelievable display of brutal strength and hand-to-hand skills. She forces herself to tear her attention away; Sam needs to be checked on, as well as Tony, who should never have been left without protection, but Steve is very much a man of his time when it comes to gender roles and protecting women despite having been married for sixty-seven years to Peggy Carter, a woman who could more than take care of herself.

Tony has come back out onto the street, following Steve initially, she supposes, though he veered over to check on Sam. The two of them have backed away from the battle, Sam looking rocky but getting himself back under control as he lets Tony help him to the relative safety of another abandoned car.

"Tony," she calls out again, but her voice is only a rasp, probably just a crackle over their comms and indistinguishable from the grunts, groans and heavy breathing coming from everyone else. Well, that explains why there's been no answer to her request for the EMP.

She can only think that Crossbones or whoever is on the other side of Bucky's comm started inside one of the nearby buildings, since no one's taken a shot at Tony while he's vulnerable. They can't count on that staying the case, though, and she really wishes she hadn't lost track of how long this conflict has gone on. It feels like it's lasted for hours, but at best it's been just a few minutes since the only sign of Clint or Loki she has is the sound of their harsh exhales as they continue to close the distance. It's going to be a race, then, to see if Bucky's back-up gets here before hers does.

Now that the gunshots have stopped, people are starting to edge out from where they'd taken cover inside the local businesses, which is a complication no one needs. Two security guards have exited from one of the banks, their own guns drawn and looking to be heroes, Natasha supposes. The only thing she can think to do to stop them is to play the vulnerable woman again, but before she can call on more tears or start their direction, one of them goes down to the sound of a gunshot coming from behind her. She spins to see not just Rumlow, but four, no five additional mercenaries and terrorists. Including a pretentious asshole and former Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure's Action Division operative who calls himself Batroc the Leaper, who in the end chose money over his country. Batroc prides himself to be the best muay thai and savate expert in the world.

Natasha has seen better, though not many outside of her boys. She prefers Krav Maga herself against someone she intentionally wants to hurt, but she's not going to be able to protect Tony as well as take on Batroc, Crossbones, and those additional mercs.

 _"Steve, I've got Bucky,"_ Clint's voice suddenly comes through clear over comms. _"Drop back and go help Tasha and Loki stop Rumlow and company. Tony, you and Sam get the hell away from here and get back to the hotel. If JARVIS is going to do his thing, make it on a ten count to give us time to drop comms before our own electronics get fried."_

Now that they're all here, the comms shouldn't be needed anyway. Natasha doesn't just tap it off but removes it and tucks it away as she turns to better face Rumlow's team. She doesn't hide her smile, either, from having the rest of her team on hand as well as from the thought of putting down Batroc. Having no doubt that Steve will want to take on Crossbones again, as long as he gets taken out of play Natasha will be happy no matter who's hand it comes by. Batroc isn't personal for her, having never come into open conflict with him, but she'll allow that she's always had a dislike for traitors, and moreover, his general behavior and attitude offends her. To ensure that he'll play his part, she calls out, "Fishing at the bottom of the barrel, Rumlow? Georges Batroc, really? C _on comme ses pieds_."

While "he's as stupid as his feet" is a common insult to the French, she expects Batroc to take extreme exception to it since, in his case, it's not just her being rude and calling his intelligence to task, but she's also disparaging his fighting skills. And coming from a woman … well, Batroc doesn't just have a reputation of being hot-headed and bloodthirsty. He's misogynistic as well.

 _"Cette pute est à moi!"_ Batroc roars as expected, charging toward her with no regard to whatever Rumlow is yelling in his direction.

Poor Georges, who certainly doesn't show any imagination in just calling her a whore.

Of course, she's already had a day in the last five or more minutes; been shot, beat-up and choked. Batroc might even be as good as he thinks he is. But when one has had the time to learn _every single_ form of hand-to-hand combat, as well as had to fight several thousands of years out of her weight class, it's going to take a much less volatile man than Batroc the Leaper to beat her in a fair fight. It only takes him a few exchanges to realize that himself. She's been expecting him to go for a weapon once he figures it out, so the abrupt appearance of the knife in his hand doesn't surprise or distress her.

Knives are Loki's specialty, not just in throwing them, but using two combat knives in close quarters battle. He's made sure each of them has learned how to counter knives being used against them in this kind of fight. It's a little trickier since she isn't intending to kill Batroc (though if it does happen, she's not going to feel guilty), but she also has to make sure she doesn't get cut too badly that he might notice her healing. In the end, she resorts to biting his forearm when he grabs at her hair to try to bare her throat during a clinch, and then flips over his arm and once more uses her weight to drag her opponent down so she can then slam his head into the ground. And then a couple more times to make sure that he's really out.

Free now to take in the rest of the battles, she doesn't spot Clint or Bucky and doesn't know what that means, but also doesn't feel that she can yet go looking. Loki has dispatched the other three mercs, but has made no move to step in to assist Steve, who is locked in as fierce a fight with Rumlow as he'd been with Bucky. This one isn't a match of skill and training, however. It's a slug fest. Brutal, vicious, and both men are bloody. For all that Steve is their Boy Scout, their paragon of virtue, he's a soldier first and foremost, an immortal born in a war against some of the worst that mankind has ever produced in the Nazis. Natasha has no doubt that he'll take Rumlow down, alive if he can, dead if he must, but she no longer has the patience for that. As tempted as she is to just put a bullet into Rumlow's head, she grabs for one of the fallen mercs' shotguns and racks it. Not too surprisingly, Rumlow attempts a grab for Steve to put him as the target for her shot, but Steve throws his head back into Rumlow's face, breaking Rumlow's hold as well as his nose with an audible crack, before bending back forward and tossing Rumlow over his body and to the ground.

Shaken, hurting, and pissed, Rumlow still chooses to be smart and makes no move to get back up when Natasha moves forward and shows him that she has him dead to rights. Even if she was close enough that he might catch her with a foot (she's not), he seems to realize that he wouldn't be able to bring her down before she got her shot off, and that she's aiming for his fucking face, not his chest where his body armor might mitigate it from being lethal.

The problem is what to do with Rumlow now, a problem that's made all the more difficult as police officers start appearing from all sides. (Sure, now that the threats have been contained.) Natasha can handle getting arrested, escaping too, if she needs, but before she has to worry about that or over Rumlow somehow buying his way out of being taken into custody, Tony also makes an appearance. Because of course he didn't take himself out of danger like Clint had told him. At least Sam is there alongside of Tony, as is the man FRIDAY had previously identified for them as Madripoor's Chief of Police, and who is looking suitably impressed by Tony and quite angry when he turns to look at Rumlow and the rest of Rumlow's men.

"You may stand down, Ms. Rushman," he then tells her, signaling for one of his men to take possession of her shotgun. "If only I had an assistant as brave and as cool-headed as you, but then what else should I expect from someone hired by Tony Stark."

His unctuousness gives her an idea of how to play this out, although she'd like to be done playing the damsel in distress. So when she hands over the shotgun to the officer, she then takes a step back and lets her eyes widen, as if she is only now becoming aware of what she's been doing in the heat of the moment. Letting her body tremble is easy, not that she's actually upset, but there is definitely an adrenaline drop even though her recovery will be measured in scant minutes, not an hour or more. More than one of the younger officers move to comfort her, but they give way when Steve comes over to wrap his coat around her shoulders and lead her off toward Tony, Sam, and their Chief.

Natasha wants to wrinkle her nose, neither Steve nor the coat are smelling that fresh, but she supposes she's not either, plus it would mess up the optics of the big strong man coming to the aid of the poor, fragile woman. Any way they can influence the narrative to keep Crossbones and company well and truly in the position as the bad guys will only help. Being sheltered in Steve's arms also gives her the opportunity to surreptitiously see if she can now spot Clint and Bucky. She still can't find either of them, but sees no additional cadre of police who might be detaining one or both of them, so she'll just have to trust that Clint had been able to get Bucky away. Just as it appears that Loki has also slipped into the crowd and away, given that he would not be identified as one of Tony's people by law enforcement, and so he can't be identified by Rumlow as the one who'd set all of this up.

No one's pointing out that the initial gunman isn't amongst those now being hand-cuffed and taken away either, fortunately. That is something more that will have to be sorted out, however, since there will be plenty of cell phone camera coverage of at least the beginning of the incident. She'll have to remember to ask Tony whether the EMP actually ended up happening, and then whether that would have screwed up everyone's phones and destroyed any footage, once they're no longer surrounded by the police. For the moment, she's just going to hope that Tony's done whatever he needs to so they can go back to the hotel and leave any interviews and depositions for later.

When, in the next instant, the Chief of Police offers his own armored vehicle and a personal escort to the K'un-Lin, she forgives Tony for being so reckless with his own life as well as potentially theirs by not leaving the battle, since she has no doubt that even with showing the police their SI employee IDs, they couldn't have managed to extract themselves so quickly or capably.

*****

Even though it turns out that they could have walked back to the hotel quicker than it takes to be driven back, Natasha finds herself grateful for the chance to decompress and simply tune out for the fifteen or so minutes it ends up taking. She doesn't feel bad for ignoring the others; it's not like they could hold a meaningful conversation sitting amongst the police, and she finds she doesn't care what Tony is spouting to the Chief since it is keeping the man from asking any awkward questions. Before today, she would have just called Tony a useful ally and continued to be appreciative for the access to his money and resources, but still convinced that they could survive and keep their secret even in this world of new technology without him, if not as easily. Today, though, Tony has proven he is much more than his money and ego or that he supports them only to show that he is just as smart as his father and that there is no puzzle or technology that he cannot overcome. Although he is no immortal, Tony is still one of them, as important, as invested, and as treasured.

She is definitely grateful for his money and reputation once they get to the hotel. With a continued police escort, they are swiftly ushered to the private elevator that will take them to the penthouse. Because it's Tony Stark who dismisses him, the Chief doesn't even take umbrage over being excluded from joining them on the journey upward. Natasha is finally alone with her family and no longer has to worry about maintaining some sort of mask or façade.

She can ask the questions that have been burning on her tongue.

"Did anyone see what happened with Clint and Bucky?" is her first one, spoken as soon as the doors close on their escort and the elevator begins whisking them upward to the sixtieth floor. "And Loki?"

"Loki ghosted the moment you had Rumlow down and starting to look around to see if he could find some support. I guess he didn't want Rumlow to see that the guy who hired him had set him up," Sam answers.

"I'm sure it was exactly that," Natasha defends Loki with a bit of a bite. "There is no reason to burn a useful alias if you don't have to, and at that point the situation _was_ under control. Don't forget, Loki chose to join in a fight that no one would have called him on for staying back to insure that Bruce and Thor found out what was going on. You don't have to forgive him if you don't want to, Sam, but you're going to have to cut him some slack. There's no point in staying suspicious of him, anyway. If he does decide to cut and run, it's not like we're going to see it coming and be able to stop him. You're just wasting energy and borrowing trouble. Isn't that what you tell the rest of us, when we have trouble letting things go?"

Sam chuckles, as she hoped he might, in having his advice turned back on him. Overall he's the most stable of them, the most understanding of their all too human flaws, so Natasha's not worried that he and Loki are going to have any long-term issues working together. She just prefers it when they're all getting along and wants to return to when they can laugh and enjoy each other's company, to keep reminding each other that they're not alone and that family is reason enough to keep going, sooner rather than later.

"And Clint?" she repeats in the ensuing silence.

"I wasn't in a position to see everything," Tony starts. "But he did free up Steve by taking Barnes down like a freight train. Then, whether it was from catching a glimpse of Clint's face, or because JARVIS leveled the EMP through all of our phones – so, sorry, they're going to have to be replaced – Barnes definitely startled and paused. Barnes then got coldcocked by whatever Clint had his fist wrapped around when he charged to the rescue. It's really sad to think that all of the footage from the beginning of the fight until that point got corrupted by the EMP. Watching all of you fight was like the best Hollywood action film ever."

"I would just settle for knowing that Clint got Bucky away clean," Steve comments as the elevator comes to a stop and the doors open into the opulent foyer of their tri-level suite.

"He did," Bruce tells them, standing next to Thor in anticipation of the elevator's arrival. Both men start to smile, obviously as happy to see them as Natasha is in reverse. She'd not realized there'd been time for those two to have made it back from their own business.

"Is Bucky okay?" Steve asks.

Smiling but not relaxed, Bruce kind of nods as he's also shrugging, and then ends up just spreading out his hands in an I-don't-know gesture. "As well as can be expected, I guess. I hope. But they're not here," he adds quickly, stopping Natasha and Steve both in their edging toward the staircases and myriad of bedrooms up on the higher floors. 

"Clint called in on his friend's phone since I guess his got fried?" Bruce continues. "He's taking Bucky to Lowtown. I got the address, and when Loki got here a few minutes ago, I sent him out to get the twins so Wanda and Bucky can at least stop the death dreams they're each having. Clint says that Bucky is beginning to remember himself, but that he's still pretty messed up. They both are, as you can imagine," he adds. "Now that you're all back, I think I had better head over and see if I can help. Bucky's apparently got some kind of mechanical prosthetic instead of his left arm, and I need to see if the damage is permanent or if somehow they've just figured out a way to turn our healing off and back on."

"Whatever they're doing with his arm, is separate from the rest of his body," Natasha says with more than a touch of horror in her voice. "He was still able to recover from the damage he was taking. I'm not sure the process was affected; he beat me even with a couple of bullets and stab wounds in him."

"Me too," Sam spoke up. "Broke my back and made me fucking useless in the fight." 

"Hey, you still defended me while you got better, Buttercup," Tony said with a deliberate pat on that recently broken back before making his way over to one of the several wet bars ensconced within the suite. "That's not useless."

"And that defense even while you were down is why I imagine Steve felt able to come to my rescue," Natasha agrees, although she still gives Steve a pointed look that has him blushing and looking embarrassed.

"He was going to kill you, in front of way too many witnesses," Steve offers in his own defense. "I covered Tony until we got to Sam, and then – "

"Saved my ass and my secret, so thank you," Natasha relents, taking her weary body over to a couch. "The same to you, Tony. Thank you. We could not have gotten Bucky back without you. Thanks aren't enough, but I don't think I have anything else to give that you could want. If there _is_ anything that I can do for you, you just have to – "

"No thanks, favors, or future killings on my behalf are necessary," Tony waves her off as he pours himself a whole handful of scotch. "We're in this all together, right? _All for one and one for all_?"

"Shakespeare's original coining of it wasn't quite the grand oath of brotherhood that Dumas accorded it," Natasha points out, not that she didn't like Shakespeare more than Dumas, as a person as well as a writer. "But yes, although I prefer _Nid Cadern Ond Brodyrdde_. It's Welsh for 'no strength but in fellowship'. And yes, please, Bruce. Go to Lowtown and see if there is any way we can help. I don't want them to feel like we're just leaving them on their own, but I also don't want us to be in the way or make Bucky more uncomfortable that I'm sure he already is. I am hoping we will be able to leave Madripoor tomorrow, but it will depend on the police and the Chancellor, and at the moment, I don't have a read on it other than the Chief of Police is very impressed with Tony's wealth. And my breasts."

"As are we all," Bruce responds with a flirtatious grin Natasha's direction. Then, "Right. So, I know that you can all take care of yourselves, but if you'll take it, my advice is to order a mess of take out and send Thor to retrieve it while you clean up. The cops aren't going to be allowed up here without a warrant, and I'm sure the threat of legal action from SI will stay that hand, as long as we don't try to sneak away en masse. But don't answer any phones but your cells – "

"Tiny problem with that," Tony interrupts. "All of ours were sacrificed for the greater good, but I suppose you can still call Thor if you need to, or send a message through email and JARVIS. You're right though about land-line calls. They are either going to be Press or Police, and make the hotel management send a lackey up if anyone _really_ needs to talk to us. So, good, yes, carry on, Brucie bear."

"Nah, I'm done. Just take this as the win it is, guys. Everything else can be dealt with tomorrow or later, including the bastards who were doing this to Bucky, once he's ready to identify them."

With that pronouncement, Bruce heads out and it is only in his departure that Natasha becomes aware that he's washed out the green dye and any other product from his hair; that he is Bruce again, not Leonard. That realization set something at ease she'd been unaware of bothering her until its absence. If Sam is their counselor and the conscience, Bruce is their faith. Not from believing in a higher power, but in the group itself. He is their rock. Their foundation and strength.

"Sit or bathe, and leave the breaking of your fast to me," Thor bids in his ebullient way to reinforce Bruce's suggestion. "I will order a repast worthy of the battle fought and prize that we have gained. And if you feel it is yet too early to celebrate, then simply rejoice that we prevailed on this day and that some small measure of justice has been meted."

"Wow, so you really do talk like that," Tony observes of Thor, and Natasha has to remind herself that this venture is actually the first opportunity for Tony to know Thor and Loki as more than just stories and the occasional name on an email or text from the times that Thor checked in during their exile.

"Do you not understand my meaning?" Thor asks Tony in return.

Tony nods his head.

"Then my words accomplish their tasks, and their style matters little. You will grow use to it, Jarl Stark, as you grow used to me."

Tony salutes Thor with his glass, and then gestures with it toward the bar to see if anyone else wants him to pour. Natasha doesn't stay to find out, but hauls herself back up and instead makes the journey to one of the suite's personal elevators; two levels of stairs more than she wants to negotiate right now to get to her room, but the idea of a bath appeals even more than just continuing to plotz on the couch. The guys leave her to her peace, although she does see Steve head determinedly to the stairs. Because of course he does. 

To each their own. Maybe she'll rouse herself to come back down to a meal, but might instead prevail upon one of them to make her up a plate. Steve, she thinks, since he wants to think her in need of his protection and assistance. A fun, if petty thought, and one she discards as she discards her clothing. More time with only herself is last thing she needs while some of her people are out of her sight. She'll not rush her bath, but she will also not shut herself in her room so that she can fret and worry. To bastardize another of Old Willie's lines:

_I count myself in nothing else so happy as a soul amongst my good friends._

*****

Natasha gives up pretending she's going to fall asleep and gets out of bed. It's two am, a time when even Madripoor is quiet and mostly asleep, as the virtuous rest from the day's business now ended and the villains turning in to rest in preparation for their business ahead. She's not sneaking out so much as simply taking care not to bother the others. And to ensure that she doesn’t get a well-meaning tagalong.

Despite the late hour, she's not surprise to discover Thor in deep discussion with Loki out on the balcony that overlooks the expanse of Lowtown, now muted to tiny, glowing embers of fairy-light instead of the hodge-podge and squalor of the country's floating population. Nor does she hesitate to swerve her steps after she clears the staircase. She'd planned to leave a note, in case she didn't make it back before one of the others awakened, but now she doesn't have to.

"Fair Natasha, you are well?" Thor asks, while Loki simply looks her over, taking in her dark and close-fitting one-piece she's wearing under an unzipped, red hoodie with a nod of approval.

"I am fine, Thor. Just with a need to see for myself that things elsewhere are as well."

"I brought back news," Loki offers, brow rising in challenge. "Word all across Lowtown is that Viper had her own grudge with Crossbones, and that she's taken advantage of his incarceration and had him killed. No one else was even injured, and the Chancellor is saying that the assassin simply saved them from the expense of a trial and formal execution. An unwanted foreigner gone, the status quo restored. And our secret preserved."

Natasha starts to voice her accusation and condemnation, but stops herself, because if she'd been thinking straight out there on the street, she would have taken care of Brock Rumlow herself. He'd not just held Bucky, but he'd _known_ Bucky's secret. No, Crossbones is just the first who must be put down.

"It wasn't me," Loki says with a twist to his lips that meant he'd overlooked the implications himself and was regretting the missed opportunity. "It was done by the right of _Kiri-sute gomen_. Death by a single slice of a sword, they say, despite the blooded wakizashi Rumlow held in his own hand. Clint and Bucky are here," Loki then says as he holds out a piece of paper containing the address she'd refused to look for after Bruce had left. "Bruce and Wanda stayed with them, but I brought Pietro back for the night as he was having some difficulties with the downside of being immortal. He's here, upstairs asleep in one of the unused beds. I've rented the room below this part of the penthouse if you wanted to go out without the hotel and possibly the police knowing that someone used the private elevator in the middle of the night."

Natasha takes the paper, her eyes straying to the side to now notice the anchor of a belaying line dropped over the railing.

"The balcony door is unlocked, not that it would have held back the redoubtable Black Widow, I'm sure," Loki adds in a mocking tone that belies the look of approval that he still carries.

"Oh," he adds as she's slipped the harness around herself and is sliding over the side, because Loki is still a bastard. "If you don't recognize the address, the flat belongs to Patch."

Managing to catch herself before she drops more than one extra floor, Natasha's hands are now a bloody mess as she's forced to pull herself back up the rope. All of the charitable things she's been thinking about Loki in the past week disappear under thoughts of revenge, but then vengeance falls to a spill of uncontrollable laughter and maybe just the thing that she needs here in the dark of the night. Oh, she is still going to get even with their scorpion, but she'll probably leave off roping in Sam or one of the others to help. She might even have to deal a little revenge on Clint, if she's going to be entirely fair, since she knows that Loki would not have chosen to indebt himself to Patch, not even for Bucky's sake.

Patch is a secret no one younger than Loki _had_ known, but now, with Bruce and Wanda there in support of Clint and Bucky, and Loki's mention of him to an ever curious Thor, it would seem that only Steve and Sam would be kept in the dark, and that impinges on her sense of fairness despite it not being Natasha's secret to tell. Which means she is also going to have to let Patch know she's going to share his secret, which means she's going to owe him too. Plus she's going to have to face both his and Steve's anger for their individual secrets being kept from one another.

Fuck, and what about Tony? No, Tony will be easy enough, both in the telling, and in convincing Patch of the telling's value. She can convincingly show Patch the benefits that come from working with Tony Stark since even intangible ones became apparent today. The problem is definitely going to come from Steve and Patch. From each of them not knowing for seventy-five years that one of the men they'd fought with in the War is not just still alive, but immortal, even if Patch, somehow, isn't one of them.

Obviously, she's going to have to insist Clint be the one who comes clean to Steve and Patch.

Speaking of clean, Natasha heads into Loki's bathroom and wipes the blood from her hands and forearms, taking care that she gets it all, but not worrying about any that gets on his towels or the countertops for the housekeepers to find and gossip about after he checks out. Her hands finish healing quickly, now that she's stopped reopening the rope burns, so by the time that she's out the door and heading to one of the hotels three passenger elevators that come to these higher floors, she's past any pain and muscle fatigue and, therefore, attracting no attention other than the lateness of her leaving. With her hood pulled up to block much of her face, and looking much more like a punk than a hooker, she moves purposefully through the lobby and into the first of the two lone taxis that hang in front of the hotel just in case someone needs their service as she does at this time of night.

Instead of directing the driver to Patch's place directly, she gives him the Princess Bar, which straddles the lines of Hightown and Lowtown. Tyger Tiger's bar is a respected place of neutral ground by both sides of the city, just as Tyger Tiger is respected as a neutral adjudicator for problems that might come up that would be better for the rulers of Madripoor not to have to deal with. Or even have to know about. The worse of the gangs respect the truce of the Princess Bar, in no large part because Patch is willing to act as Tyger Tiger's bouncer, enforcer, or executioner against those who might break the truce.

Natasha is willing to believe that even Rumlow would have stayed his hand had he run into Steve within the Princess Bar though, of course, all bets would have been off the moment either man had stepped outside.

She finds O'Donnell behind the bar when she enters, the man who on paper is the owner and now well into his seventies, as American as they come, with his blond hair, blue eyes, and a Brooklyn accent that rivals the one that Steve had when she'd first met him. O'Donnell has earned his own acceptance from the locals, some over time and a cultural respect for his age, some because he never seems to forget the name of a former customer and some, of course, because he's a man that both Patch and Tyger Tiger trust.

Natasha trusts him too, to an extent, and greets him with a buzz to his weathered cheek when he motions her over to the bar.

"I should have known the Widow was in town when her partner, Hawkeye, graced my doors this week," O'Donnell greets her as he pours her a glass of his top shelf vodka.

In here she is Russian, Natasha Romanoff to a few, but mostly the Black Widow, spy, thief, and partner to Hawkeye, one of Clint's aliases and just as deadly an assassin as Ronin, but certainly a more genial one, with as many friends within the underworld as enemies.

"Be careful if you see Viper over the next couple of days," O'Donnell then takes to warning her. "She's pulled off quite the coup, and is feeling her oats, as my Da used to say. Maybe even enough that she is thinking she could challenge the Black Widow."

Natasha pulls out a bill that pays for her drink ten times over, as well as a down payment for more information. "So I've heard," she replies after throwing back her shot in good Russian form. "Have you heard anyone who's taken exception to Crossbones' death?"

"Prince Baron is none too happy," he says of the former ruler of Madripoor, before they bowed to world pressure and instituted their own twisted, corrupt form of democracy so the country can collect its share of the money and contracts that the United Nations pretends will be used for the people's benefit instead of the official and de facto rulers. "But I think he's mostly upset because he'd hired Crossbones for something himself, and doesn't want to have to deal with the Winter Soldier to go through with it."

"What about _Zimniy Soldat_?" she then asks, dropping her articles in true Moose and Squirrel fashion, because American's still believed that's how Russians spoke their language. "Heard some sort of dust up this afternoon. Hit on Tony Stark?"

"Right now, the betting line favors that the guy this afternoon was a fake. He failed, after all. A lot of people are thinking Soldat and Crossbones had a falling out, but that Crossbones was afraid to lose the business, and so put up someone else to look like his partner. Though Viper's taking the credit, folks around here are thinking the Winter Soldier is the one who Ronin was really working for. Most folks are just happy that any war between those guys got nipped in the bud with minimal collateral damage."

"What about the hit on Stark? Is still on?"

"Sorry, Duchess," O'Donnell says in real regret, as he is truly neutral, not caring about who kills whom or for what reasons, but he does have his favorites. The Black Widow being one.

"If you were in the market, word is that the sponsor's in the wind. Sure, if anyone could track the sponsor down, it would be you and the Hawk, but after a botched hit on someone like Stark? Going after him again is going to take an army or a bomb, and that's a whole lot more heat than prudent folks are willing to deal with, especially if they're concerned that the paycheck at the end of it no longer exists."

"I appreciate drink, O'Donnell. Buy your _deti_ something fun, on me," Natasha tells him, bringing out two more bills to match her first, and slides them over.

They disappear with a bit of slight-of-hand that belies O'Donnell's age and otherwise arthritic fingers. He gives her a nod when she gets up after throwing back the rest of her drink, then picks up her glass and starts wiping down the bar, in the tradition of bartenders the world and the ages over. Natasha has no further need to stay, so she merely acknowledges a few glances her direction, but heads out.

The truce of the Princess Bar actually extends out for several blocks and includes the taxis that are willing to pick up departing fares, since the ones that are willing to drop people off in whatever part of town they're asked to, are a valuable resource in their own right. Natasha doesn't plan to take one, though. She'll walk to her destination, not that she's going to take a direct route. Or one that isn't done through the shadows. Reputation is everything in Madripoor, and down here in Lowtown her Black Widow one is as recognized as Tony's. But while that most often means that people won't confront her, there is still the occasional idiot who is looking to make their own reputation by counting coup against the Black Widow. Not to mention that there are always people willing to pay just for sightings and other information on her movements. Even if she isn't concerned about bringing someone to Patch's doorstep, she'll be losing any eyes on her as a matter of course.

She's also lived long enough (even in her first lifetime), to know that just because there is a truce, there are always people who don't give a shit. So she tries never to take things – or people – for granted.

Her hoodie is reversible to a flat, faded black, and with the hood thrown back up, the only hint of color she shows now is the paleness of her face, though again that is also obscured. Most of the lights in Lowtown come from inside the buildings, as any street illumination gets shot out or stripped for salvageable materials. The moon alone provides enough light to guide her walk, which is good as the homes with their candle-lit house shrines quickly turn into shacks and lean-tos whose inhabitants are too poor to waste candles even for shrines after they go to bed. Then even those buildings give way to warehouses that, even in the daylight, are hardly more than stacks of abandoned debris. Even so, the trip to Patch's place is uneventful.

Right up until she's maybe three buildings away from his, a building that from its outside looks no different than the rest of the squalor surrounding it. She's been expecting Patch to intercept her from the moment she decided to show herself to O'Donnell. While the old bartender might like her well enough, his only loyalty is to Tyger Tiger. O'Donnell will have done his job in letting his boss's right hand know that the Black Widow was in Lowtown.

"Natalia," Patch greets her around his cigar, the smell of which is how she'd caught note of him before he came out of his own shadows.

At least he can't get cancer or any other ailments from his smoking. She's used cigarettes as props herself over the years, but has never acquired nor wanted to enjoy the taste. And she hates how the smell lingers on her clothes and in her hair.

"Logan," she, too, uses the name that she'd first met him using.

According to what little Natasha has ever found on him, Patch had been born as James Howlett, back in the late 1800s, somewhere in the wilds of Canada. He'd been going by Logan when a few of them had first run across him in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Also working to denounce Rasputin, she and Logan had both died when the madman was successful in his retaliation, thereby spilling their mutual secret. The shock of discovering that Logan was immortal like them but somehow apart from what connected them, had caused no amount of consternation, confusion and, eventually, conflict over whether to tell the others (who'd chosen not to become involved in World War I and then the Russian revolt of the Duma). She and Logan eventually managed to part under an agreement to not get in each other's way should they come across one another in the future.

Over ensuing years, they'd still run into each other during certain conflicts and political upheavals. Friendships developed and grew; Clint and Bucky in particular when the two of them had joined Logan in the search for Amelia Earhart for a couple of years, then with Loki during the Spanish Civil War, and of course with Steve, when he and Logan were stationed together in the early part of WWII. Even she'd ended up seeking Logan out after losing Yelena, hoping to find her balance again, hoping he could help her attain the peace he had managed after directly witnessing the horror of Nagasaki. He'd taught her the virtues of _isagiyosa_ , and _hansei_ , even Tai Chi, in the six months that he'd hosted her.

Natasha has never asked why Logan chose to leave the peace he'd found in Japan for the chaos and violence of Madripoor. Different rumors over the past twenty years had Patch as Tyger Tiger's father, as Viper's too, though most likely more to try to explain how a Gaijin had come to command _xiào shun_ from so many disparate locals than from any true belief in the women's parentage. As far as Natasha knows, Logan has never had any children, has only been married once – and that during his first life – and that he still holds onto the pain of losing Silver Fox as deeply as Steve holds onto Peggy's memory. As far as the matter of his acceptance by people like Tyger Tiger, in Natasha's opinion, it's because Logan believes deeply in the principles of bushido. That he also has formidable skills in a number of martial arts doesn't hurt matters, especially in a place like Madripoor.

"A little late and, I think, too early as well, to come collecting," Logan reproaches her.

"Not collecting," she assures him, although Natasha knows that the need for them to leave will come soon – and, yes, too soon for Bucky to find the kind of healing peace that time with Logan can offer him.

There are other ways to find peace, fortunately, such as claiming vengeance on those who stole it in the first place. If she gets her way, she'll give that to Bucky.

"I've been told all is as well as can be expected, but I cannot rest until I see for myself," she explains. "You were told what he's been through?"

Logan nods. "Seen it too. That business with his arm is some fucked up shit."

She knows she pales, that he sees it even in the surrounding dark, and a part of her is angry for giving so much of herself away, even to him. While she's not forgotten that metal monstrosity Bucky had been tortured with, she's managed to put it out of her mind and dwell more on the other degradations Bucky has had to endure. The reminder of the sheer physical pain that Bucky must now be going through leaves her deeply unsettled. She will find no _seijaku_ here tonight, but then, maybe she doesn't need stillness and calm. Maybe it's okay to feel anger and to show fear. To cry and scream and –

"Aw, fuck, Nat. Come here,"

She gets enveloped by Logan's arms and brought to his chest, where she lets herself cry for a few long minutes. There is relief in the tears as well as pain and despair, a release and a catharsis that she normally only allows herself in front of Clint and then Bruce, who'd eventually replaced Bucky in that when she needed to cry on Clint's behalf.

"Better?" he asks when she starts to regain control, though he doesn't let her pull away as she intends.

She nods and allows herself to accept the comfort of his closeness for a few more moments, before she raises her head and deliberately brushes away the tears and snot on the soft flannel of his shirt. He simply laughs, though, and gives her a squeeze tight enough to make her ribs creak, before letting her free.

"You folks need any help in going after the rest of the fuckers who held Bucky, you let me know," he offers. "For some, the only justice is death, and I know you've gotten a bit squeamish about that in the last century. If you're feeling troubled about Ronin's work tonight, don't be. Clint didn't do it out of vengeance, though we both know that he had every right. We talked, and his abiding concern was to make sure that those bastards get no chance at any of us again, especially someone like your new girl, Wanda. You know they are going to want to replace what they've lost, and from what Bucky remembers of the last few days, they know that Wanda exists, even if he doesn't think he was able to articulate anything specific about her. It was retribution and prevention, not revenge."

"Hopefully a little revenge," she confesses, because it would have been had she done it. She then gives Logan a punch. "And fuck you, I have not become squeamish. I'm just mindful of the advances in technology and investigative techniques. Our actions have always become part of history, but now with cell phones, the fucking internet, and DNA forensics, they're getting too good at keeping track."

"I stand corrected. Offer still stands, though. You need any kind of help, I'll be there."

She nods. What Logan has already done for them is more than enough, but she understands how their problem could become his, so she'll at least keep him informed. "For now, I'd just like to see them."

It's his turn to nod. He doesn't say anything, just starts back up the road, the glow from the end his cigar a floating beacon of light in the darkness. She hears the screaming before Logan's got the door to his place open, sheer animal pain that dissolves any sort of calm she's managed to regain. That certainly explains why Clint has gone to ground with Logan instead of bringing Bucky to The K'un-Lun, or back to wherever he'd been holed up before the attempt on Tony. Even out here, where there should be only a few squatters and passersby (given that Patch isn't about to let the gangs get a foothold in his territory), the screams won't pass unnoticed, but also won't produce any calls to the authorities.

"His arm's growing back a lot slower than Banner says normally happens with you folk," Logan explains, grabbing her arm for a moment when she made to rush into the building. "The prosthetic was actually melted into the muscle and bone of his arm, a device built in that continually cut away what started healing. We ended up having to cut it all free at the shoulder. Don't really see how Buck managed to even function, much less become the fucking Winter Soldier, but that collar around his neck kept him pumped with a mixture of opium and some other shit that contributed to the memory loss. They could turn it all on and off, and Banner thinks the occasional release of pain is what made him pliable."

Natasha wants to vomit, wishes she killed Crossbones herself (after days if not weeks of showing him all the ways she could have hurt him without letting him die). She wants to resurrect Zola and Whitehall to do the same, and she's going to scour every archive and inch of the internet to find traces of their friends, family and associates to uncover descendants until she can find out everyone who could have ever been involved with holding Bucky. She'll visit ruin and vengeance on even those who might have profited from his capture, whether they knew the secret behind him or not. And as for those who held him, then and now, she will show them why the Ancient Greeks remembered her as Nemesis, the Ancient Hebrews as Raguel.

But that is for the future, and now she reaches back to Logan and lets him see her gratefulness for conveying all of that with a clinical dispassion that she might draw upon as her own. For the wholly inadequate gratitude she feels for him in saving Bruce or Clint from having to be the one to tell her.

With dry eyes and a blank mask more than an expression in place, Natasha follows Logan inside. She takes only a moment to appreciate how utterly transformed the interior is, how there is no hint of the decrepitude and neglect the exterior shows. His home reminds her of one of the more high-priced lofts everyone yearns to own in Manhattan. To no surprise, its aesthetic is minimalist, a perfect example of _ma_ , with the blanks spaces as important as the design and placement of the furnishings and decorations. Filled with plants and neutral colors, with low lighting, tatami mats and several _byōbu_ and _sudare_ placed to create different living spaces, Natasha has to consciously remind herself that this started out as a large, rectangular warehouse. It's a high-ceilinged, single story room, who's only permanent structures are the exterior walls, the string of load-bearing columns down the middle, a walled off wash and bathing room toward the back, and his kitchen, the only truly western thing that Natasha can make out.

Wanda has folded herself onto a zabuton cushion and looks to be doing her best to ignore what is going on behind a beautifully painted, six panel _byōbu_ inspired by Hasegawa Tōhaku's _Pine Trees_ , though done in pale blues and greens to depict the mists and shadows of trees instead of creams and smudges of blacks. Bucky screams are decreasing, but more because of the damage they've done to his throat, Natasha fears, than because the pain has lessened. They will also start up soon again, she expects, as his throat heals quicker than his arm.

As Natasha slips out of her boots, Wanda fluidly rises to her feet and comes to greet her. She looks drawn, no doubt sees the same in Natasha, but she finds a smile and draws Natasha over to the low _chabudai_ that has a small tea service set atop. "Let Bruce come out and take you back," she says. "Bucky has regained enough of himself to be embarrassed by his reactions, and Clint is helping him get cleaned up. His arm has finally finished being restored but he is having trouble using it."

Natasha can only nod, her emotions still too close to the surface for her to want to try speaking. She takes a sip of the tea that Wanda pours for her, not surprised that it's a premium grade _matcha_ , and while she has a preference for a black Russian Caravan tea, she's sampled varieties from many parts of the world, and learned early on to appreciate food or liquid in any form from there being so many times it was scarce. She's also had plenty of time to learn how to hide any distaste she might feel that would insult her host.

Logan takes a seat across from Wanda and accepts his own cup of tea with curt thanks. "So is Tony Stark a part of this, or was he just your sacrificial lamb?" he then asks Natasha.

"He volunteered after we figured out that Bucky was still alive."

"So he knows?"

She nods. "As his father did before him. He's been an invaluable resource, one that you can call on too, if you're okay with me letting him know about you."

"I have my responsibilities here, Widow."

Another nod. "And I'm not recruiting," Natasha assures him. "Although know that you are always welcome to walk with us."

His turn to nod but then his expression turns more contemplative than gruff. "Before the lot of you leave, I've got a name for you, a guy back in Westchester, New York, if Buck needs someone to talk to. He's a professional, and something of an ass, but he helped me come to terms with some things, even with him thinking we were talking about something else. His specialty is soldiers and hostages, and even if Buck says he's alright in the next few weeks, you've got to know that he isn't. Folks like us, we get fucked up in the head like everyone else, and the bastards who had Buck did a master course on him. Chuck will help him deal with that."

Natasha knows her smile turns brittle. Her distrust of doctors runs long and deep, from days past when they couldn't always keep their secret and the wrong people found out and performed experiments in the name of medicine and science. Even the most righteous can become cruel and torturous when confronted with a bounty unimagined, and while she knows psychiatry as a profession doesn't lend itself to the same kinds of abuses, their institutions still create their own horror. Knowing all of that as well, and for the same reasons, for Logan to trust one of them must mean that this Chuck from Westchester is someone worth checking out. Sam is great for even some of the big stuff, the existential problems that come with their longs lives, but he would probably be the first one to say that he is not qualified to help Bucky get through the killings he was made to do for so long, while the physical and mental aspects of the torture they used to control Bucky is also a different level of trauma than Sam is qualified to deal with.  
  


Before she can do more than nod in acknowledgement of his offer, however, Logan's attention shifts toward the back of the room, picking up a noise Natasha hadn't. Anxiety and anticipation flood her body. Although everything she learned from O'Donnell she'd needed to find out, she'd also been completely honest when she'd admitted she'd come out because she'd be unable to truly rest until she sees Bucky and Clint for herself.

Expecting Bruce from Wanda's comment, instead it's Clint who comes out from behind the screen that shelters what she's assumed to be Logan's sleeping area. Natasha finds herself rising to her feet without consciously planning to do so. She looks him over as they move toward one another, sees no evidence of any physical toll from overcoming Bucky in the street, of course, but all of his anguish and fears, his anger and now the relief are there for anyone to read, not just her. There is also his quiet elation just from having Bucky here with them, too, no matter in what state, and she knows that her own growing joy and sense of rightness are pale, puny things compared to Clint's sense of being whole again.

"Coulfi smiles down on us tonight," he whispers to her as he takes her into his arms, much like Logan had done, although this time her tears are mostly from joy. And she is not the only one crying.

Her and Clint's veneration of Coulfi doesn't stem from a belief that he exists on some higher plane. That they hope he might intercede on their behalf (or that he even could). He is their totem. Their memories of him their connection to their past and their inner selves. He is the embodiment of who they want to be and how they live their lives. A father figure, but also so much more; brother, teacher, friend, for all that he was just a man with his own faults and fears, even more loved because of them.

Theirs is a complicated relationship with religion. They were both born before the concept of god even came to be and were the inspirations for some of the pagan ones anyway (not to mention remembered as angels and demons as well). Neither of them ascribe to Christianity or really any other official religion. _Gods_ are just names that some, when the world was young, used to justify their right to rule over others, all about power and control, as if humanity had the right to define and capture the ineffable. Natasha's faith is a much simpler thing. No Heaven. No Hell. Just an awareness that life is so much more than even she will ever know; an appreciation of the natural world that is not diminished as humanity begins to understand it; a belief that each person controls their own fate and can choose to be good or evil; and a hope that when her final day comes, what she has done will have meaning that lives beyond her. As Coulfi's teachings still live through her, Clint, and all of the ones they've walked with along the way.

"I'm sure Logan will let us light a stick in Coulfi's memory on his _Kamidana_."

Clint nods. He takes a deep breath, and then lets her go, but only so far as he can draw her around so they can walk side by side, arms interlinked as he escorts her to the back of Logan's home. Natasha can make out low murmuring, Bruce's voice although she doesn't try to make out his words, and then Bucky's, who sounds understandably quiet and faltering, but then she supposes he's had little reason – or opportunity – to hold a conversation for many, many years. 

As they reach the screens, Natasha can now make out that they are speaking Koine-Greek, a language that she hasn't heard spoken since the sack of Constantinople. She wonders if Bruce is testing Bucky's memories or simply connecting with him in the tongue that they'd both spoken when they first met. She and Clint both have a tendency to speak to each other in the Old tongue in those first few moments after reviving; she at least finds it grounding and knows that Clint takes comfort in that small reminder of how much they have shared.

Bruce sees her first, standing and facing her direction although he is mostly looking at Bucky who seems to be dressed now in sweats that she had last seen on Pietro: silver-blue with brighter blue and white stripping. On Bucky they seem stretched; although he and Pietro are both of the same height to an inch or so, Bucky has always had a warrior’s muscle-mass, not a sprinter's. His hair is damp and as long as he wore it in the ancient world, but loose around his face instead of tied back in a plait or a queue. His face, when he turns to see who has caught Bruce's attention, is lit up with expectation of Clint returning. Natasha is pleased to see that that happiness doesn't diminish when he sees that she's accompanied Clint.

"Talia," he calls out to her and once more she is engulfed in strong, male arms. Two arms, which she will silently admit to being grateful for, as mutilation is the one thing she thought never to have to worry about seeing linger in her family. And, like too many circumstances of this day, there has been a part of her that thought she might be hearing only what she would want to hear, and so couldn’t fully believe that he could fully heal until she saw it for herself.

"It's just me," she tells him softly, not in Ancient Greek, but in the Steppe language that predated even proto-slavic, the two of them having been born in the same region of the world, though two millennia had passed in between. "The others can't wait to see you, but no one wanted you to feel overwhelmed. "I think Bruce is mad at me for defying his instruction to stay away. I hope you are not."

"Never," he whispers back fiercely. "My Talie; my talisman. I didn't know your names, couldn't imagine faces, but I knew the two of you were out there. That you would find me if I couldn't find you."

"I am so sorry that it took so long." Tears come again, from guilt, from relief, once more cleansing. Natasha basks in his embrace, in the giving and accepting comfort, in the tactile confirmation that he has return to her.

When they eventually let go and step back from one another, she sees that Bruce disappeared at some point, and that Clint is straightening up the mess that got made of Logan's bed chamber. There is no sign of Bucky's metallic arm, for which Natasha gives thanks with all her heart, but there is plenty of evidence of the struggle and pain that had occurred here. Like someone else's scars, though, she sees only proof of survival. Of triumph. Of a strength of will and spirit, and absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.

Still, she supposes that Logan will be happy to get his futon back with the clean mattress that Clint's pulled out of the bottom drawer of a lacquered, antique _tansu_ set against one of the walls that separates the bathing room. To see the room restored and all of the physical reminders of what has happened removed. It's not going to help in staving off the nightmares, of course – she's quite certain she'll have her own just from the telling. Clint and Bucky will have each other, and Wanda no doubt will turn to Pietro, but she wonders if Bruce would mind if she keeps company with him for the next few nights, that they might mutually offer each other some solace.

She hopes that Logan has someone he can reach out to, and makes a promise to herself that she will give him a call in a week or so, just to check in.

For now, though, Natasha's concern is on Bucky and their next steps. "Have you given any thought as to what you want to do?" she asks him, not about to presume or make any decisions for him. She's prepared to stay with him here for the rest of the night, or take him back to the hotel if he wants, to even get him out of the country right now and leave the others to follow if he chooses that. She's even ready to watch him walk away, for him and Clint to disappear for a few years, possibly decades, though she hopes that won't be his first choice, and she'll insist that Clint checks in every three days if not more frequently, at least in the beginning.

"Spend the night with my fella is probably the top of the list," Bucky offers up, his eyes tracking Clint's movements like a man starving. "I wouldn't mind sleeping in a real bed as well, no offense to Logan's giant pillows. Having some blankets and keeping warm sound like a touch of heaven." He shoots a quick grin at her but immediately returns to watching Clint, who is turning pink in his cheeks when he notices from sending his own, short but constant, glances Bucky's direction.

"I'd like to chow down on some real food, too, not just the shots, pills, and chemical shakes they had for me when they'd bring me out of the deep freeze, though Bruce says I'd better take that slow or I'll mostly be tasting puke. I'd also like to buy myself some clothes, not these weird pajamas that Clint says folks wear in public, now," Bucky says of the sweats as he pulls on one of the sleeves.

Natasha is pleasantly surprised to hear Bucky talk of personal, intimate wishes over the grander scheme of things; he sounds like himself, practical, generally optimistic, but also a little contrary since he's dancing around the answers he knows she's looking for. She'd been expecting a focus on revenge since that's where her mind is at, or that he might even be too depressed to want to decide on anything. This might actually be his way of coping – ignoring what had been done to him for now and instead focusing on all of the things that must seem strange to him as, for Bucky, the last seventy-five years really didn't happen but in brief spurts. The memories he's been recovering are _all_ of the past, whether very ancient and not so much, yet even his most recent ones will be horribly dated, as the change in society, technology, even language usage has accelerated so much quicker than in eras past. Adapting as civilization creates its own future has been hard enough at times, even when they were actively part of that change. Bucky will have a lot of catching up to do. Like discovering that sweats don't just come baggy and in athletic gray now.

"I should also probably introduce myself to Wanda, now that I'm no longer oblivious, or a raving madman," Bucky adds. "And I understand that we work with Howard's son?" he asks, turning once more to look at Natasha since Clint has gone into the wash room. "Howard actually found a woman he wanted to marry?"

Clint gives a chuff of laughter as he comes back. "Maria was a saint. After Howard finally settled down when it came to women, he still thought they were after him for his money or his inventions. Maria, though, she turned him down multiple times," he tells Bucky gleefully, "She wasn't impressed by any of the things that made him _Howard Stark_ , inventor, millionaire, playboy. Her only interest in his money was for what Howard did with it. That he used it to help people, not profit off of them. The Maria Stark Foundation is now one of the most respected philanthropic charities in the world."

"Tony has all of Howard's best and worst qualities," Natasha imparts. "He has a chip on his shoulder the size of the world that's on Atlas's – in the shape of Howard's shadow. Arrogant as hell, but also as smart as he thinks he is, and just as charming. Tony is also generous to a fault with his friends and throws money at any problem, not trying to buy friends or loyalty but because he is used to giving whatever it takes to help, be it his fortune, his intellect, or his reputation since it automatically becomes newsworthy if he's involved."

"You'll either love him, or hate him, sometimes both at the same time," Clint adds, now coming to stand with Bucky and Natasha, reaching out to touch the both of them, "He'll grow on you," he adds. "Same with Wanda's twin, Pietro, who's a smart-ass, but also a good kid."

"How many more people know about us?" Bucky asks, his eyes darkening, his expression losing some of the brightness it holds.

"Just those two, outside of Wakanda. T'Chaka's son who is the new king, T'Challa. Along with his sister, Shuri. And Okoye, who is T'Challa's top general and the head of the Dora Milaje."

"Plus the bastards who had me," Bucky spits out. "Clint says he took care of Rumlow, so that leaves a handful of doctors, techs, and scientists at the lab, plus all the fucking records."

And there is the anger Natasha has been expecting.

"And whoever is running it all," she adds.

Bucky nods, his anger turning to frustration. "If I ever heard the name of the man in charge now, I don't remember it. Zola was one of the first scientists, with some other German. They kept my existence from all the high ranking members of the party, even Mengele. I guess they were waiting until they'd be able to tell them what I was, and how they could use me to replicate our abilities."

"Bucky, we don't have to go over it now," Natasha starts, but he shakes his head and gives her a hollow laugh.

"Waiting isn't going to make it easier to tell, Talia. And telling it in front of a crowd? That's not going to be jake either," he admits, shame now coloring his tone. "But if you don't want to hear it, I can write it down or something," he offers, like he's apologizing – like it was his fault –

"We're here to listen to anything you want to tell us, Bucky," Clint assures him, to which Natasha adds her own emphatic nod.

"Yeah, well, it ain't like it's much," he states, the frustration in full force again. "They kept me froze most of the time. I really can't say whether I was alive or dead then. I don't have memories of anything during that time but coming out of or going into the ice. I think the first time they took my arm, it was to see if it would grow back like the fingers and toes did."

Natasha's not sure whether it is her or Clint who makes a distressed noise, but Bucky keeps going, his voice flat and sounding unaffected, which is just as horrible as what he's actually saying.

"Later they'd do it to measure how long it took me to bleed out. To see whether I'd heal first, depending on how far up they cut it off. Then, whether I came back slower dying from an injury like that than from other ways. A lot of that kind of shit," he finally summarizes, although it is far too late for Natasha's heart and nerves.

Clint's expression keeps wavering between fury and distress, but like her, he doesn't shy away from listening, nor make any move to stop Bucky from getting the horrific words out.

"That was all Zola," Bucky now sounds animated. "He wanted to _understand_ me, like I was just some damn experiment or lab rat. The other guy back then, the German? He's the one who mostly tried to figure out if he could make someone else immortal. Once the war ended, they stopped worrying about needing something to show their bosses, and after a few more years and no useful answers, I guess they got bored or found something new to occupy themselves with. I got sold off. A new lab and new scientists; those all spoke Russian." He stops for a moment, takes in Clint and Natasha's expressions, and gives them an uneasy smile. An apology again, or maybe a warning that the horrors have just begun.

Natasha reaches up with her hand and cups his cheek. Offers a tremulous smile of her own before drawing her hand down to keep it pressed against his chest. His heart. Clint simply gathers them both into his arms, giving Bucky a kiss where Natasha's hand had rested before burying his face in Bucky's shoulder.

Maybe it will be easier to speak – and to hear – when they are not looking at one another.

"I think the Russians are the ones who figured out how to strip away my memories. Most of those years involved drugs as much as the ice. They wanted to me to work for them, but too many drugs, and I couldn't do anything," Bucky says with a chuff of bitter amusement. "Too much time off of them, and I'd start to remember. They tried some threats, killed hostages when I wouldn't obey, but they never gave up trying to make me _useful_. Eventually one of them twigged to the pain and relief combination after they stripped away my memories, and figured out what kind of window they had to use me, mostly to kill people. I think I got away once back then, came back to myself long enough to kill a lot of people in the lab, and that's when I got shipped out to someone new, who partnered me with Rumlow. I couldn't tell you how long ago."

"Pretty sure if we go by when Crossbones became a name, we'll be able to pin down when you left Russia." Clint offers, voice muffled until he slowly lifts his head. "We've been working on who is behind him since we figured out you were the Winter Soldier. The German lab, all of the original people involved have to be dead, but we'll make sure," he promises.

"We also shouldn’t count on the only records being in the hands of those who most recently held you," Natasha points out. Now that it doesn't appear to have been just one organization but several, they – Tony – will definitely have his work cut out for him. "So that's more people we need to unearth."

"As long as Rumlow's boss is the first." Bucky demands fiercely.

"Oh, yeah, babe," Clint assures him with all of the weight of his five thousand years of life behind the vow. "That's guaranteed."

*****

The search, once they put Tony on it (or, more accurately, JARVIS), goes quicker than they could have hoped. The time some of them had spent going through newspaper archives and museum records in Vienna, Berlin, and in Auschwitz, yielded a few pictures and accounts of Daniel Whitehall after the end of the War, which in turn starts a list of names that JARVIS begins to identify, with pictures, when they could be found. The German that Zola worked with turned out to be a man named Wolfgang Von Strucker, and from him, they are able to identify associates and contacts, some that Bucky identifies as most of the people in the lab who knew exactly what he was. Clint, of course, wants to figure out the identities of the guards as well, but as no one from that first group still lives, there seems to be little point in making a list of the dead longer.

The trail to Russia proves no more difficult, in part because Bucky's memories continue to come back, the quicker after good rest and proper meals. Bucky is also pushing himself to get right again, quicker than anyone thinks he needs to, but there is no one who wants to deny him this. During his third day staying hidden in the penthouse of The K'un-Lun, while during lunch, he recalls a name: Lukin. Lukin turns out to be Aleksander Lukin, former KGB officer. One who went rogue and underground just before the fall of the Soviet Union. Through contacts Natasha had established during the brief time that the Soviets thought she was spying for them back in the 1980's, they learn that Lukin died back in 2000, the whisper being that Russia's new president had discovered that Lukin had been working for himself as well as the Motherland, and that as part of his disloyalty, he'd given up something that could have restored the Republic to its former glory. While that might not refer to Bucky, it seems confirmation that Lukin had involved himself in projects like Bucky.

Although they have still to identify some of the people Lukin would have worked with or used, Natasha is certain that they will. She's also certain that they won't have any difficulty dealing with those who might have survived the wraith of Lukin or Russia's current president. They are of secondary priority, however, as while they are working to unravel all of Lukin's network and activities, they come across the face that is causing them all to keep long hours.

The source of Bucky's reoccurring nightmares.

Alexander Pierce. The man who been pulling Crossbones (and the Winter Soldier's) strings. The man who also happens to have been the United States' Ambassador to the UN, serving at the pleasure of the last _two_ American Presidents, and is now up for consideration as the next Secretary General.

"Some might consider assassination a pretty drastic version of diplomacy, but I suppose we now know why he's been so successful at it," Tony quips when he's told about Pierce, having spent most of the day, Steve at his side, giving his deposition (along with a promise that SI will assist in helping upgrade Madripoor's antiquated energy grid with some of the new green technological advances Tony's developed), so that they don't have to worry about having to come back to Madripoor during the trials for Batroc or any of the other surviving terrorists.

Natasha would hit Tony, were she close enough, but Bucky laughs, which breaks the tension and a bit of the despondency that had overtaken them after seeing just how difficult a target they now face. Even Steve backs off from the reprimand Natasha can see building on his face, although Clint still looks pissed. Bruce just looks embarrassed yet resigned on Tony's behalf, while the others are trying very hard not to react at all.

"You really are a chip off the old block, aren't you, Stark," Bucky comments with a shake of his head, from where he's sitting practically glued to Clint's side on one of the room's loveseats.

They've all adjourned to the large living room of the suite, some of them doing further research or something else on tablets and phones, some paying scant attention to the weird animated show that has dogs dressed like law enforcement that Clint talked FRIDAY into hijacking and playing on the big screen television, that FRIDAY mutes the moment Tony walks out of the elevator. Sam and Loki seem to be battling over some card game that instantly gets forgotten, while Natasha sets down the book she has in hand but was not really reading.

"All glib words, while trouble to you is just water off a duck's back." Bucky sounds admiring, but also dismissive, which had been a big part of his relationship with Howard, with him thinking Howard never took anything serious enough, despite the both of them ardently fighting for the Allied cause.

"I assure you, I take trouble seriously, Buckster," Tony says with the smile he perfected for the camera. "But I haven't let a problem intimidate me since I was seven. If a solution doesn't exist, I make one. To get to Pierce, we just have to maneuver ourselves into a position where we have something that he wants."

"Like a new, pet assassin," Loki suggests. "He's going to want to replace Crossbones, even if he's also concerned about replacing the Winter Soldier. He will want to protect himself."

"Don't think he's going to be looking to hire Ronin, after this," Clint remarks dryly. "He also has to know he could never convince the Black Widow to do anything but a one off for him. Assuming he could even afford her."

"And you've burned Luke to him," Natasha reminds Loki. "We have to expect that Crossbones identified you to Pierce, to get his blessing to accept the hit on Stark."

"Have I really?" Loki challenges. "I think Luke Laffeysson might have an in with Pierce. Luke has money and a willingness to do what it takes to correct an injustice, regardless of the legality or the risk. Pierce might even be impressed that Luke managed to deduce – or seduce – his identity as Crossbones' benefactor. It's not like I would have to kill _for_ him, just kill _him_ during a first meeting."

"Is that what we truly are?" Wanda questions, her tone one of disquiet and revulsion. She and Pietro have seemed almost as engaged with the dog cops as Clint wants Bucky to be, but now she shifts in her seat on one of the couches to look at them scattered throughout the room. "Assassins?"

"When we have to be," Steve allows, somewhat to Natasha's surprise.

She hadn't thought Steve has lived long enough to accept that laws don't always mete out justice, or that, sometimes, keeping their secret means giving up a little of their own morality.

"I'm not saying we're above the law," Steve continues, looking troubled and resolute alike. "But I do think there are times when the greater good requires extraordinary actions."

"So you do think you can be judge, jury and executioner?" Pietro scoffs. "Why you? _Dočerta_ , why Pierce?" he asks with a curse. "If you're so concerned with the greater good, why have you not killed President Zemo in my country, or any of the other despots currently ruining their people's lives?"

"It is only their own greater good that they worry about," Wanda says to him in disgust, slipping back into Sokovian too.

Natasha's not sure how to answer their accusations, since the twins aren't wrong on the surface of it.

"That greater good now involves you," Sam points out before Natasha can articulate anything. "That might not mean much to you right now, but even if you think the tradeoff is worth being discovered, that you think that somehow, those people are going to be grateful, or that they are going to do anything but take you in to see how you tick, you're not thinking about the risk for Pietro."

Sam looks more frustrated than angry, like he’s trying to teach her instead of condemn her, but it's hard, even after all this time, to fall short in someone eyes.

"Even without the evidence of what happened to Bucky," Sam continues, "you can't assume that if someone finds out that you are immortal, they're going to just leave you alone and let the discovery go unmarked and untested. If it's you, they'll grab Pietro too. Maybe just as a lever to keep you under control, but you know that eventually someone will want to find out if the mutation or whatever it is that makes us, us, is genetic and passes through to other family. They're not going to take your word for it that it doesn't happen that way and, hell, maybe it has happened in your case, since you're twins. But at some point they're going to hurt him, and probably kill him. You'll either lose your twin, or they'll gain a new tool to play each of you against the other."

"Clint said we don't have to stay with you," Wanda counters, wildly, because of course Sam's words are getting through to her.

"That we have a choice," Pietro finishes her assertion. "If we disappear, no one will know to come for us," he concludes proudly, like they've won the argument.

"Pierce knows you exist," Bucky kills that hope of Pietro's. "He doesn't know of Wanda personally, but he knows there is someone else out there like me, and that you just discovered what you are. He even knows it happened in Sokovia, so it shouldn't take him long to track down everyone who died there a couple of weeks ago. Even if it is hard to find you, he won't ever stop looking. Sure, you can disappear, but you're only going to be safe after we rub him, and everyone else who knows about us, out."

They both still look disturbed by those answers, but after a short silence and private glances to one another, Wanda nods her head. Natasha doubts that the greater issue over killing to maintain their secret is settled, but she'll take it as it being accepted that Pierce needs to die.

"You ask by what right do we judge and kill, but I say if not us, then who?" Thor interjects from his seat at one of the desks near the floor-to-ceiling bay windows. "No one else in history has the kind of perspective and understanding of the human condition that we do. Who has seen the good and the bad of humanity." He smiles gently at the twins, with the weight of his years shining in his eyes and coloring his tone.

"It is just such perspective that keeps us from changing governments out of hand or smiting down the wicked," he tells them. "In the past, we would save a town or a country. A people. Sometimes those peoples' lives changed, improved. Yet just as often they ended up putting their trust in someone as bad as or worse than the one we eliminated," he acknowledges with a sigh. "The only way to keep that from happening would see us stay as their new ruler – or god – and indeed, that path was chosen a few times. But even for us, even with the best of intentions, we are ultimately taking away a peoples' right to choose for themselves, so how is that better?"

"We hope that our work provides inspiration and hope, but the only one who can change someone's life, is that individual," Bruce inserts, not sounding quite so kindly as Thor had, but from bitter experience.

Not because he'd been the one trying to help others, but because he'd been the one refusing to accept the help when it had been offered.

"It definitely sucks to just stand by and watch the same mistakes get made over and over, but that's the only way things get better. When enough people figure out that slavery or Apartheid, that ruling by force of arms instead of the will of the people, or that refusing to accept that people are going to love one another no matter their color or sex or gender, is wrong, things do get better," he adds, now warming to the subject.

"Not that it's likely to make you feel better," Steve offers, "but a guy like Pierce, even if he didn't know about us, we'd probably still be taking a look at him once we found out about his connection with Crossbones. The things he's done aren't because he got elected or convinced an army to back him. He's simply decided that he's the only one whose opinions and views of the future matter, and that he's going to ensure that he gets his way by eliminating people who he doesn't like. It's a subtle difference, maybe, but _that_ is who we are."

And that is why Natasha believes that Steve will end up taking the lead in their mission soon. He isn't puffed up in self-righteousness or talking down to Wanda (not that Sam or Bruce had either). He isn’t simply a man who believes in his convictions, but someone who convinces others that his convictions are worth believing in.

"And now taking things back to Pierce before we all go out to enlist," Tony speaks up in an exaggerated tone, no less affected by Steve than the rest of them, but definitely more uncomfortable in showing how other than by overreacting. "We have to figure that his paranoia and anger is going to be off the hook for the next few weeks," he points out, calming down even if he still sounds like he's making light of things. "Anyone who approaches him is going to be suspect and subject to all kinds of testing, assuming they even can get that far. Someone showing up with an offer to take Crossbones' place?" he then interjects, walking over to take control of a keyboard after he gives a double-take to the frozen image of two cartoon dogs arresting a high-priced poodle, and calling up an image of Pierce standing next to the current American president.

"Pierce will either think that I've sent someone in retribution, or the Winter Soldier has," Tony concludes, clicking through more images of Pierce with other recognizable politicians, statesmen, and philanthropists. "Maybe even suspect that his hypothetical other immortal has come after him. So while he _might_ not strike first and just shoot anyone he doesn't know, he's still going to contrive of a way to see them cut or bruised, see how quickly they heal, and then act accordingly. I know that I would, were I in his place. No, I don't think sending in a replacement assassin is going to work," he says with a shake of his head.

"I could go back to him," Bucky offers to an immediate uproar and a great deal of consternation on not just Clint's part, but from the rest of them, including Wanda. And Pietro.

"No, hear me out," Bucky speaks up over them, grabbing a hold of both of Clint's hands to further still him. "I'm not saying I'll let him put me under or anything like that again. But I could contact him, tell him that I might consider working with him again, under certain conditions."

"Why would he believe you?" Bruce asks from where he's gone to join Tony and stopping the parade of images on one of Pierce from years back, when he'd actually been rather attractive in a different kind of chiseled, Aryan way than Steve.

"He's been having you tortured and killed for years. If you remember enough to know Pierce, then he'll know that you remember that as well," Bruce says further.

"Yeah, exactly. For _years_. Just like the other guys before him. But think about it," Bucky asks of them. "This world isn't the one that I knew, especially now that I do recall myself. Pierce doesn't know who I was before I became a weapon, so maybe I don't disagree with his motives, just his methods, at least the ones pertaining to me. Maybe now that I'm off the drugs, I've had a chance to consider why he used me, and maybe I can see where he's coming from. That I _agree_ with some of his vision for the future." He turns his gaze on Clint, since that's going to be his toughest sell.

"Maybe I just realize that I need help navigating and finding my place in this new world, and he's the only person that I know. I could say I'll agree to kill for him, if he agrees to help me find the new immortal, and also agrees to leave her alone. You think he won't take the chance that I could be telling the truth?"

"I think he would definitely shoot first and let you convince him later, after he's broken you down again," Tony says bluntly. "But props for your bravery, however foolish. At best," he bludgeons on without a care for the scowls he's amassing, "Pierce will use you to find Wanda, instead of the other way around, and it's the Pietro situation all over again, with him playing the two of you off of each other. Or he just freezes or sells you off to someone else while he works with the new model. Someone that's not going to cause quite so much the fuss."

"So do you have a better idea?" Bucky challenges.

"Not – "

"If you think he wants me, why don't you give me to him?"

"Absolutely not," Clint responds first to Wanda's offer, before everyone else's objections make their outcry over Bucky seem tame. And quiet.

Natasha knows that Clint isn't valuing Wanda over Bucky – Bucky knows it too since he's looking just as scared and incensed by what Wanda has suggested. Bucky, at least, knows what he's volunteering for. He also has the years, the strength, and the fortitude to weather through it, should it go well or end with him being trapped again.

"I could – "

"You have a choice, but so do we," Clint talks over her again. "Your first act with us is not going to be murder, even if he does deserve it. You don't. We definitely aren't there yet."

"I thought my first act was offering to trade my life or freedom for Bucky's. Isn't that also what we do?" she counters and, oh, but she's a clever girl.

"I think we've lost our focus," Sam cuts in to the furious staring match and the subsequent silence as no one has a decent counterargument to her last statement that doesn’t undercut the profoundness of her offer.

"We're saying the biggest obstacle in getting to Pierce is that he isn't going to trust anyone that he doesn't know. So what about the people he does know?" Sam asks the room at large.

"You're thinking we can flip one of his people, get them to turn on him?" Steve puts forth.

"Maybe not one of us, but maybe Tony could?" Sam throws out there. "He's got a vested interest, after all, in dealing with the man who agreed to let his assassin take an outside job. There's bound to be someone who is in dire need of some money, maybe even a way out of Pierce's organization. Or is there someone who worked and liked Crossbones? Who could now be concerned that they're going to be let go in the KGB fashion?"

"Rumlow's second. He was part of the group picked up in Madripoor. I never knew his name, but … "

One of the things Bucky has adapted to almost immediately is the tablet that Tony set up for him, with a written interface with JARVIS right now. Since Bucky never used any of the early computers, he doesn't know that regular computers don't just answer the questions he types in; that you have to search and that most of the answers you get back are worthless.

"Jack Rollins," Bucky identifies him after FRIDAY throws up the pictures and IDs of the men who'd been arrested with Rumlow onto the television screen. "He and Rumlow were pals, maybe even something more. If Rollins could be convinced that Pierce suspects that Rumlow let out Pierce's identity to Rollins, Rollins might want to whack Pierce first before Pierce gets around to offing him."

Natasha suspects that the brief smile Tony can't keep from showing is from Bucky's dated language, but at least Tony is wise enough not to further call attention to something Bucky has no control over, or remind everyone else of the reason why Bucky hasn't had any opportunity to learn modern slang. Perhaps he's had enough of being cast as the callous one in the room.

"Another good idea, Buckaroo, but again, not quite there," Tony then disagrees, blowing Natasha's hope out of the water. "If Rollins knows Pierce well enough to be able to meet with him, then there is no reason for Rollins to think that Pierce will have him killed. It would also have to involve a jailbreak, which yes, I know you all could pull off, but there are other variables too. Too many details out of our control, and like Clint first said, we're not there yet. We can do better. We need – "

"We need to convince someone Pierce would trust, someone who has no idea who Pierce actually is," Clint states what should have been obvious, but what the rest of them had missed, even Tony. "Someone who has access to Pierce, like through the US government. Someone who'd listen to our case even though we can't show them all of the proof, who would then make their own judgement."

"Someone who would agree that it is in no one's best interest to have the nature and details of Pierce's crimes be brought out into the light of day," Natasha agrees with a look Steve's direction, knowing exactly the someone Clint is thinking of. "Someone like – "

"Nick Fury." Instead of sighing though, or denying it, Steve looks, while not enthusiastic, at least that he agrees with the assessment. 

As a rule, they don't often work with government agencies, and very, very rarely with the same person more than once, but Nick Fury is the current exception to that rule, even if none of them particularly like working with Fury. They do trust him, to a certain extent, and they have absolutely no doubt of Fury's commitment to his country, even if Fury's a little fuzzy on following the laws of it. The best spies are, though – they have to be – and had he been born at the right time, Natasha knows Fury would have been Fleming's inspiration for James Bond. A spy's spy. Utterly ruthless, completely dedicated, and honorable in his own way.

Although Fury has shown them credentials that say he's CIA, he has too much of an active hand in domestic intrigue as well, and so their consensus is that he is more likely NSA or even DIA. They've mostly worked with either of Fury's deputies, a woman by the name of Maria Hill, or with a legitimate CIA agent, Everett K. Ross, in doing Fury's bidding. But Steve has worked two assignments with Fury directly, while he and Sam had just finished taking care of something else with Fury just before they found Wanda. They believe that Fury sees them as simply very capable, very useful mercenaries, former spies and soldiers who'd come together to work on the side of the angels. Natasha also thinks that he trusts them as well. While Ross would likely listen to them, there is a much better chance that Fury knows Pierce over a low-level field agent.

"I guess I have a meeting to set up," Steve says.

"I suggest that you wait until we're in the air," Tony suggests with a wide grin that only makes sense with his next words. "They're getting my plane ready now and we've got a priority window for departure anytime in the next three hours, but we all still need to pack. So, are we flying to Manhattan or DC?"

"Manhattan," Natasha replies. "So you can go home, Tony."

"I can help – "

"You can't be seen by Pierce anywhere near Nick Fury until this matter is done, or we're back to all of our problems," she reminds him. "I imagine Pepper is expecting you to go back to reassure the board, anyway. Anything else is going to make Pierce suspicious. I'd prefer that his paranoia stays free-floating without him thinking you've uncovered his connection to Crossbones."

"What about us? Now that I've met Bucky, do we still come with you?" Wanda asks.

"If that's what you want. Or we will get you tickets to anywhere you choose," Natasha assures her.

"What she said, but even if you wander away, you can always get in touch with me," Tony extends his own offer with a wave of his hand. "You're an Avenger now."

"A what?" Bucky asks.

"Avengers. That's what we call oursel – "

"Bullshit – " Bruce interrupts Tony.

"No way – " Sam says at the same time.

From Loki, "What the hell – "

And Thor, "Yes!"

"Name aside, Wanda, yes," Clint's voice cuts through the cacophony. "Whether you do or don't step out that hotel door with us, you are one of us."

*****

At any other time, Natasha might worry at how easy it is to convince Fury of Alexander Pierce's perfidy. Under Tony's direction and JARVIS' abilities to insinuate himself into any database with an internet connection, they have put together, admittedly, mostly circumstantial evidence of his involvement and directives for numerous crimes, dating back to when he was just a junior ambassador in Bogotá. Which is when, it turns out, that Fury first met Pierce, and so he is taking things somewhat personally. One of the things that has helped is that Rumlow _had_ been indiscrete, maybe not with his lover, but they have uncovered audio from two phone conversations where he bragged to an underling about how far up their food chain went, identifying patronage from a high-ranking, though unnamed, US official. There is also the testimony intercepted from the Madripoor police, where Batroc says he'd been told they wouldn't have to worry about repercussions cleaning up after the hit on Tony, not because of any arrangement with the local government, but that they could claim diplomatic immunity if they got detained, and that it would be backed at the highest level, with them only getting kicked out of the country. 

(Not the case, as Batroc learned to his great displeasure.)

Alone, none of it is enough to condemn anyone, much less Pierce. But it does hang together in a damning picture when they assure Fury that they do have an eye-witness account, even if they imply that their testimony was a deathbed confession. Natasha suspects that Fury's going to see if he can garner some kind of confession, even if Pierce doesn't recognize he’s confirmed their allegations, but what matters is that for the moment it's worked. Fury has agreed to introduce a couple of Marine escorts given temporary duty as a courtesy to the former Ambassador, now that there's credible chatter in the intelligence community that Pierce has been marked as a target for the infamous Winter Soldier.

They haven't told Fury they plan to kill Pierce before Fury can take him into custody, but they'll deal with that when they have to.

It's decided that Natasha and Sam will be the best to send in, even though it's possible that Pierce has seen pictures or video of them in their personas that had worked for Stark. Once Sam shaves off his facial hair and puts on a uniform, they're figuring Pierce's sense of privilege will kick in, that he will see only the soldier and not the man. The same for Natasha, now a bob-cut blonde also wearing the anonymous dress blues of the US Marine Corp. They're putting some hope into Pierce being a racist and misogynist piece of shit amongst his other faults; that because Master Gunnery Sergeant Sanborn is African-American, and Staff Sergeant Jordan is a woman, he'll see them as only faceless, disposable bodies there to protect his own.

So far, that seems to be the case, as Pierce has already dismissed them as he greets Fury into his office.

"So, the Winter Soldier, huh. What in the world did you do to get on his radar?" Fury asks by way of his greeting as he accepts the glass of scotch that Pierce pours for him.

"Does it matter?" Pierce says with the kind of grin that had probably been devastating when he was young. 

All of the photos and videos of a younger Pierce that Tony collected had him appearing quite handsome and charismatic, traits that he no doubt used to help him get to the position he'd achieved today. Natasha can still see it in him, and can't even fault him for that; she's done the same any number of times. She even understands (perhaps too well), how easy it is to be influenced by your own cult of personality and lose sight of your original intentions. If that is true in Pierce's case, though, it no longer matters. He's so far off the rails of decency that even if it turns out that he's had a brain tumor growing in his head for years and causing his actions, taking him down would still be a mercy killing. If not for Pierce, then for plenty of other people. Natasha is not going to weep and lose any sleep over it.

Fury shrugs and takes a good slug of his drink before setting it down. "I suppose not. Well, unless you deserve his bullet," he then adds with a shark grin, going totally off script and catching Natasha off-guard, although she'll admit she shouldn't be.

Fury's fierce bluntness has always been a big part of his technique. Saying truths as if they are lies, calling bullshit on the people he works for or is supposed to respect. Natasha has video from when Fury had told a handful of world leaders that they'd made a stupid-ass decision that he'd elected to ignore, much to Steve's mortification as he'd been there standing behind Fury, that she and Clint still giggle over when they need a quick pick-me-up.

"A man doesn't get to my position without making enemies, Nick," Pierce laughs him off.

Natasha would like to think she saw a momentary flash of fear, that perhaps Pierce's heartrate has sped up and that there might even be a touch of sweat dampening his brow. If Pierce is Fury's friend, he should know at least some of the same things that Natasha does of Fury's character.

Pierce covers it instantly, though, taking his own sip, stalling, she thinks, hoping to get a better read on Fury.

"The higher the profile, the more people looking to bring someone down," Fury agrees with a friendly nod. "Still, it makes you wonder, seeing how you're not all that important at the moment. A couple of years ago, sure," Fury acknowledges, looking at his glass instead of at Pierce. "Or maybe once you get the spot you seem to so very badly want. I would think it would be a lot easier just to discredit you, though, if someone decided they didn't want to see you as Secretary-General." He now raises his gaze back to Pierce, face still impassive, still like this is just speculation or a logic exercise, with even a small smile playing about his lips.

"Or President, if that's where you see your endgame," Fury adds like it's an afterthought. "Certainly that would be cheaper than hiring a high-profile assassin like the Winter Soldier. Folks do love to see their celebrities fall, and the right accusation of impropriety, maybe a sexual assault in your past, or just some ugly rhetoric to win the backing of those kind of folks who want power seem to court? Doesn't even have to be true to be effective. To make you poison. Especially when killing a man like you brings down all kinds of heat."

"Well, then, I guess I should be grateful that I have you as my gatekeeper, Nick," Pierce responds with his own smile that's no more genuine than Fury's. Just like gratitude isn't the emotion that he's leaking, though he is trying to appear much more comfortable with things than he feels.

"Grateful that you've brought me these fine Marines, although I'm sure that you're already working on a way to stop the Winter Soldier, and so no blood will be spilled to protect mine."

That almost sounds like a threat, not so much directly against her or Sam, but a reminder to Fury that he's the one with all the cards here. The one whose life will matter to two Marines if Fury isn't playing him straight.

"Funny you should say that," Fury says with grin. "I've already stopped him."

"I don't understand, then why the Marines?" Pierce looks thrown. Like he thought they were playing a game of Chicken, but it turns out that Fury is playing liar's poker.

"I know you love a grand gesture, but this seems more like posturing and that was never your game, Nick. You live and die by your own merit and actions, and eschew politicking. If you've caught him, why do I still need protection?" Pierce asks.

"I never said I caught him."

That brings Pierce up short.

Natasha is impressed with this bit of cat-and-mouse. It's a side she's never seen in Fury, but he plays it like he's a master. When this is all over, she's going to have to reconsider all of their past interactions, uncover the times that Fury successfully played them, and then decide what, if anything, she's going to do about it.

"I think you had better say, then, what the hell you do mean, Director Fury." Now Pierce seems to have figured out that not only are they're playing a game of Russian roulette, but he's been the only one taking all of the pulls.

He's better than Natasha has given him credit for, given how it seems that he prefers to use other people for his work so he can keep his hands clean. He's been maneuvering himself around to the back of his desk, deliberately, while making it look random and unplanned. She has no doubt that there is a gun there within reach that he can now get his hands on. She's also curious to see how he thinks this will play out. How he plans to get rid of three bodies from his fancy, high-rise corner office that looks out over the Potomac. Self-defense will be a pretty hard sell, considering who Fury is.

"What I mean, Mr. Ambassador?" Fury repeats, voice and expression heavy on the sarcasm and scorn. "I never took you for an idiot, but if you need me to spell it out, sure. You never should have sanctioned a hit on Tony Stark. That man has the connections and resources you only dream of having. "

"So you're working for Stark? I'm disappointed, Nick. I always took you for a true patriot." He pauses. Instead of reaching into his desk, as Natasha is expecting, though, Pierce reaches into his pocket, saying, "That's why I never had any real use for you." And then, "I wouldn't do that," as Fury pulls his service weapon. Pierce pulls out and brandishes a remote before he reaches down to his desk drawer to then pull out a gun. "I may have hoped your intentions would be honorable, but that doesn't mean I didn't prepare to be wrong," Pierce gloats. "You make any move toward me, and I'll detonate."

"Killing yourself to stop me from killing you seems a little redundant," Fury says derisively.

"I never said the explosives are set in this building," Pierce retorts, using the same inflections that Fury had used about not catching the Winter Soldier.

"Do you know how we brought Crossbones and the Winter Soldier down?" Natasha speaks up. As Pierce whips his face toward her, she thinks he actually had forgotten that she and Sam were a part of this. That he thought they were just Fury's props and the non-entities he saw them as.

That he and Fury were having some kind of epic hero-villain standoff.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she continues. "Did I just step on your moment?"

Pierce snarls. "Control your people, Fury. As I am indeed the man you've discovered me to be, I have no compunction about killing thousands of government workers. Or maybe they're just corporate drones. Or kids. Schools, grade schools especially, are actually very easy to gain access to."

"I'm not sure whether that qualifies as monologuing, or just cheesy villain dialog," Sam takes his own moment to chime in.

"Cheesy monologuing?" Fury offers with a glance Sam's direction, practically ignoring Pierce.

Who doesn't like that one bit. "God damn it, Fury! I will – "

"No, damn you, you motherfucking _pizda_ ," Natasha cuts Pierce off. "You will do nothing because now there are two things that you don't know. The answer to the first, how we brought Crossbones down, is an EMP. Set off through a cell phone just like the one in Fury's pocket right now," she tells him. "And the second thing is that, as good as you saw that the Winter Soldier is, he was taught by somebody better."

They don't hear the shot that punches though the back of Pierce's head and throws his body forward onto his desk. Clint is set up too far away, not even on the twin to the tower they're standing in, but from a top room in the taller building beyond the Triskelion. That building is at a range that only a handful of people in the world would even consider trying to make the shot from. Bucky is one of those handfuls, but he didn't have to hear the explanation about how PTSD or the way that reliving his trauma so soon could further mess him up to defer taking the shot to Clint.

Their only hint that the shot is coming is in knowing that Clint, along with the others, has been listening in on everything that's been said. He's the one who loves the theatrical gesture that Pierce ascribed to Fury, having spent much of the 1950s bumming around with a travelling circus while he grieved for Bucky. It's just a pity that the person that set up was aimed at died before he could appreciate the awesomeness of it.

In the instant that the floor-to-ceiling window shatters under the bullet's impact, Natasha's jumping toward Pierce's ragdoll body, so that she's there to catch the remote as it falls. She's not willing to gamble on lives that she has no doubt Pierce was willing to spend, that Tony might have missed his own cue, or the chance that this time an EMP might fail.

"Actually, there were three things you didn't know," she tells the corpse. "Those window-washers yesterday? They replaced that ballistic glass you counted on to protect you."

*****

Stark Tower really is a monument built to hold up Tony's colossal ego, as he'd once admitted during one of his self-reflective moments; a sweeping phallic symbol, complete with a tattoo and glans cock-ring in the towering, neon blue swirl and letters the spell out STARK circling the out jutting helicopter pad a few stories down from the tapered top. A combination of lower-level retail and high-rise corporate offices, the top twenty floors are all personal, with limited access, including his multi-level penthouse home, ten floors of research labs and conference rooms, and then four different floors of residential apartments that he's always been generous to offer to his friends. Natasha doesn't stay here often, as she's spent the last decade travelling mostly through Eastern Europe, but she appreciates the place he's kept for her. That he's even gone so far as to encourage her to decorate it, and to assure her that whatever she might want to leave behind within it will stay undisturbed and inviolate, save for the occasional cleaning. He's done that for each of them, and to have something that is individually theirs, but still with communal space is exactly what they've needed for the last few months.

Thanks to Fury, fallout over Pierce's death did not reach them, unless you counted the numerous times in the past six months that Fury has tried to recruit Clint after finding out the particulars of the shot he had made. The idea in the beginning was to report Pierce's death having come from a stroke or a heart attack and cover up the actual cause of death. After Pierce's display of contempt, however, not only to his country and the higher offices he'd held, but to what Fury had always believed was a real friendship, Fury didn't want to see Pierce's coffin resting in state, or the press and the people to lionize a traitor.

His idea of discrediting Pierce sounded much more fitting and so a story got crafted about misconduct with women in his past, and what got reported about his death was that Pierce had committed suicide by arranging for his own assassination attempt in the hope of garnering unearned sympathy and still preserve his legacy. Hearing reports that once Christine Everhart broke the story, women actually started coming forward with their own stories of abuse and assault they'd kept silent on out of fear of such a powerful man, leant it all a kind of irony that Natasha appreciated. It also helped that Pierce hadn't had a wife or any kids, that all of his family had preceded him in death, so this truth about him being revealed didn't harm anyone else.

Crediting the hit to the Winter Soldier has also given them the opportunity to put an end to the assassin; Fury proved willing to take the credit for killing the Soldat while trying to apprehend, and with Tony's involvement, they took the meticulous notes that Pierce had kept on his machinations and instead made them the Soldat's ledgers, so that at least the extent of Pierce's crimes could be made public to the ears that needed to hear them. Even if the surviving victims – and most of the intelligence community and world governments – got their closure by hating the wrong man, closure did come. Of course, nothing ever works out perfectly, so there had been a few tense days after Tony had broken Pierce's encryption to read that Bucky had been the one to physically kill his parents. Logically Tony recognizes that Bucky had had no choice. That it had been Pierce's decision. But coming to terms with that emotionally – for the both of them, since Bucky had considered Howard a friend – is still a work in progress.

That's one of the reasons Natasha has been spending most of her days away from the tower. Between Bucky's feelings of guilt and alienation (not just by Tony but from the entire world), and Clint's residual guilt and anger over what Bucky had been forced to do that's Tony's reactions are only making worse, the drama has just gotten to be a little too much for her. Especially when Steve keeps trying to get them all to reconcile, not understanding that that will come naturally, but only over time. That forgiveness can't be forced. 

Fortunately, Wanda feels the same way about the atmosphere in the Tower, and so Natasha has had the opportunity to rediscover all the things she loves about Manhattan and New York City, by showing the twins around the Five Boroughs. Today, though, she's gone out alone, to complete a specific task she'd started before she'd left DC.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Romanova," she is greeted by one of the main receptionists and several of the security guards scattered across the lobby as she starts over toward the secondary reception and security desk that controls access to the private elevator that goes directly to the top floors. Natasha isn't sure how comfortable she is to be known to so many people, or how her life has become all penthouse and private elevators, but she is enjoying the novelty of friends outside of her small circle of family, and taking the time to stay in one place for a few years, well that is something that they've earned.

Mrs. Arbogast is the sentinel who commands that bastion, a fierce woman who can't be swayed by tears or elaborate excuses, and who is never fooled by fake messengers or prop deliveries. JARVIS is, of course, the final guardian to Tony's domain, as he controls the actual operations of the elevator and won't even allow the doors to open if the proper security badge isn't in hand, but from what Natasha understands, there have only ever been three people who have made it past Mrs. Arbogast to gain unauthorized entry to the elevator, and only one person who was able to fool JARVIS.

The discovery of how Fury managed that is something Tony is still trying to figure out.

For all of Mrs. Arbogast's iron will and formidable demeanor, there is something about the loveable nature of a one-eyed, shelter mutt, even when it has a service animal vest on its back and is following its training by staying close to Natasha's very fashionable, very expensive heels.

"Oh my God, Natasha, he's adorable," she gushes, actually coming out from behind her desk to get a better look although she knows not to actually approach. "What's his name?"

"Lucky, of all things, despite having been abandoned after getting hit by a car and losing his eye. The thing is, I think he will be, now."

To her surprise, Mrs. Arbogast gives Natasha something of a gimlet eye. "You know you aren't supposed to give pets as gifts," she scolds. "And it's against the law to use a vest if the dog doesn't have the certification."

Natasha mimes being hit in the heart. "Really, Bambi, you would think that of me? Lucky is fully Pups4Patriots trained, and Clint and Bucky already decided to get a service dog to help with Bucky's PTSD. They're just being themselves and keep dithering over what kind of dog to get."

"Ah," Mrs. Arbogast says with a knowing expression that turns into a nod. "So you just got tired of watching them dick around and made the decision for them." She might not have seen Clint for a couple of years, and has only met Bucky recently nor had too many interactions since Bucky has been reluctant to leave the tower, but part of why Tony hired her is because of the way she can read people and divine their character. And even if Mrs. Arbogast didn't excel at her job, Clint had made a point of befriending her early on, as he's always preferred getting to know the staff and the invisible workers around him over dealing with the people in charge.

"Is it wrong that there is a part of me that is shocked that you picked out such a broken looking one, but that I also feel that Lucky will be perfect for them?"

"I could claim that I was being noble, that I picked Lucky _because_ I figured he'd get rejected by everyone else, but I actually had to fight for him," Natasha admits.

"Please tell me you're not the one who ran him over," she asks, hand rising to her lips.

Natasha shakes her head quickly. "But I can happily say that the one who did, found himself in jail for animal cruelty. No, I wanted Lucky for them, because he's similar to a dog the two used to look after years ago. I thought that in addition to the actual benefits that his training is going to provide, he'll remind them of that happier time and help them reach a new place of joy."

"I can't imagine what it's been like, thinking that your husband was killed over in Afghanistan, only to find out years later that he's been a prisoner all that time, with no one even knowing to go look for him."

It's a story close enough to the truth that it covers the instances when Bucky's memories or his outdated understanding of things call attention to his actions. Clint hadn't wanted Bucky to have to explain anything, of course, but Sam and Tony had both pointed out that Bucky was eventually going to make his way out of the Tower without a constant escort from one of them, and that if a handful of his people knew something of what had happened, they'd be in a position to offer assistance until Clint or one of the others could get to Bucky.

Bucky didn't want the cover, because he feels he's being given respect that he hasn't earned, but it's not as if Bucky hasn't been a soldier a time or two hundred in his life, or that he was anything other than a prisoner of war and deserving of every honor and distinction friends and strangers alike want to give.

"Well, Clint has always been a one true love kind of guy, so there was no danger of him moving on," Natasha says in full honesty.

Clint might have eventually taken other lovers, but Natasha can't see that he would ever have fallen in love again. Not like what he and Bucky have.

"Love is a funny thing," she agrees. "I never felt the need to move on either, but then I was much older than Clint when I lost my Norman, so I have plenty of good memories to keep me happy. New love is a game for the young. You, now, my dear – "

"Love is something that I have had, that I do have, and nothing you need to worry about for me, Mrs. Arbogast," Natasha reassures her. "I've got enough memories to last me a thousand lifetimes."

– finis – 


End file.
